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Abstract
Den wenigsten von uns ist bewusst, dass die Art und Weise, wie wir schlafen, sehr stark vom kulturellen Umfeld mit geprägt wird. Schlaf – unter dem soziokulturellen Blickwinkel betrachtet – macht deutlich, dass die Entscheidung wo, wann, wie, mit wem und wie lange geschlafen wird, nur scheinbar von individuellen Vorlieben, tatsächlich aber von kulturellen Normen und Konventionen abhängt.
Introduction: According to surveys conducted annually by the American Pet Products Association, more than 45% of dogs sleep in their owners' beds. This gives rise to the question: Is this trend also seen in other countries? To find answers, we decided to conduct a survey with the focus on sleeping habits of pet owners in Austria.
Methods: Between July and October 2013, pet owners were invited to answer a web-based questionnaire on the frequency of sharing their beds with a dog. The online survey developed by experts of the ISWF and the Clever Dog Lab Vienna consisted of 22 questions addressing various aspects related to sleep habits and sleep quality.
Results: From the 635 completed questionnaires, 631 were analysed. A total of 93% of the participants were females (mean age: 38.5 years) and 43% of the sample owned more than one dog. Results showed that 78% of participants sleep regularly with their pet (s) in the same bed/room. Although 26% described their sleep as mildly, but frequently disrupted by the pet, the overwhelming majority believed their sleep quality to be positively influenced by the
presence of the dog (9.1; maximum 10 points). They also rated their sleep as 'sounder' (8.7) and 'deeper' (8.1), fall asleep 'more easily' (8.6), and 'feel safer' (8.2).
Discussion: Our results are in line with the findings of surveys conducted in the US. Thus, we conclude that sleeping with dogs is a common sleeping arrangement. However, the question which remains unanswered is: Is this a healthy habit?
To examine gender-specific associations between sleep duration and sleep complaints and incident myocardial infarction (MI).
Cohort study.
A representative population sample of middle-aged subjects in Germany.
The study was based on 3508 men and 3388 women (aged 45 to 74 years) who participated in one of the 3 MONICA (Monitoring trends and determinants on cardiovascular diseases) Augsburg surveys between 1984 and 1995, who were free of MI and angina pectoris at baseline and were followed up until 2002.
N/A.
A total of 295 cases of incident MI among men and 85 among women occurred during a mean follow-up period of 10.1 years. Compared with women sleeping 8 hours, the multivariable adjusted hazard ratio (HR) of MI among women sleeping < or =5 hours was 2.98 (95% CI, 1.48-6.03), and among women sleeping > or =9 hours 1.40 (95% CI, 0.74-2.64); the corresponding HRs among men were 1.13 (95% CI, 0.66-1.92) and 1.07 (95% CI, 0.75-1.53). In multivariable analysis the relative risk of an incident MI for men and women with difficulties maintaining sleep was 1.12 (95% CI, 0.84-1.48) and 1.53 (95% CI, 0.99-2.37), respectively, and for men and women with difficulties initiating sleep the relative risk was 1.16 (95% CI, 0.82-1.63) and 1.30 (95% CI, 0.81-2.06), respectively.
Modest associations between short sleep duration and difficulties maintaining sleep and incident MI were seen in middle-aged women but not men from the general population.
The book traces the interactions of American allopathic medicine, industrial capitalism, and the human desire for sleep from the late 18th century through the turn of the 21st century. The foundation of contemporary American sleep is laid in the 19th century, when industrial workday demands the coordination and consolidation of sleeping and waking patterns. What was lost in this transition was unconsolidated sleep – instead of two nightly periods of rest, or daily naps supplemented with nightly sleep, one eight hour period of sleep was substituted as a new norm. This norm laid the basis for the emerging field of sleep medicine, which took as its primary concern the eradication of napping and insomnia, and substituting eight regular and consolidated hours of sleep. This invention of consolidated sleep led to the eventual pathologization of many forms of sleep, and provided the basis for contemporary sleep medicine. The present interest in sleep, exemplified by advertising campaigns for “Z drugs” – a new chemical that promotes and consolidates sleep – is not so much new as an intensification of a two hundred year old interest in making “normal” American sleep. In the present, I focus on the lives of physicians, scientists, patients and their families as they deal with the social frictions that sleep disorders are accepted as causing. I argue in the conclusion that by recognizing the human limits of sleep, we can apprehend sleep’s variations as non-pathological, and that with more flexible social institutions and expectations, the medicalization of sleep might be subverted.
How did humans sleep before the modern era?
Because the tools to measure sleep under natural
conditions were developed long after the invention
of the electric devices suspected of delaying and
reducing sleep, we investigated sleep in three preindustrial
societies [1–3]. We find that all three show
similar sleep organization, suggesting that they
express core human sleep patterns, most likely characteristic
of pre-modern era Homo sapiens. Sleep
periods, the times from onset to offset, averaged
6.9–8.5 hr, with sleep durations of 5.7–7.1 hr,
amounts near the low end of those industrial societies
[4–7]. There was a difference of nearly 1 hr between
summer and winter sleep. Daily variation in
sleep duration was strongly linked to time of onset,
rather than offset. None of these groups began sleep
near sunset, onset occurring, on average, 3.3 hr after
sunset. Awakening was usually before sunrise. The
sleep period consistently occurred during the nighttime
period of falling environmental temperature,
was not interrupted by extended periods of waking,
and terminated, with vasoconstriction, near the nadir
of daily ambient temperature. The daily cycle of temperature
change, largely eliminated from modern
sleep environments, may be a potent natural regulator
of sleep. Light exposure was maximal in the
morning and greatly decreased at noon, indicating
that all three groups seek shade at midday and that
light activation of the suprachiasmatic nucleus
is maximal in the morning. Napping occurred
on <7% of days in winter and <22% of days in summer.
Mimicking aspects of the natural environment
might be effective in treating certain modern sleep
disorders.
Cross-cultural anthropological studies have shown that group sleep with
individual bedding is historically the most prevalent sleep environment in human
societies (Worthman et al. 2002). Co-sleeping, on the other hand, defined
as the sleep situation of two individuals with common bedding and close contact,
is characteristic of mother-infant interactions in most societies. Although
the duration of mother-infant co-sleeping is affected by culture and individual
preference, it clusters around the first-week post parium, the consolidation of
the infant's nocturnal sleep or the end of nursing. There are few examples of
cultures with extended father-infant co-sleeping (Jenni and Connor 2005).
Co-sleeping with an adult partner is a more recent phenomenon restricted
to certain cultures and even then often dependent on both the age of the
individuals and their relationship. This sleeping arrangement, however, is characterised
by some additional features ....
Zusammenfassung
Die menschliche Selbstdomestizierung wird am Beispiel einer Körperfunktion - des Schlafens - anhand älterer Dokumente aus den Bereichen des Wohnens, des Reisens und der Arbeit untersucht. Die Befunde - eine Veränderung der Schlafstandards in Richtung auf eine größere soziale Distanzierung der Menschen im Schlaf - werden mit Ergebnissen der Schlafforschung verglichen.
A hypothesis concerning habitual sleep reduction and its adverse consequences among general population in modern societies has received wide publicity in the mass media, although scientific evidence supporting the hypothesis is scarce. Similarly, there is an extensively distributed belief, at least in Finland, that the prevalence of insomnia-related symptoms is increasing, but evidence for this is even sparser. These issues are important because of the known increased risk of mortality and health risks associated with sleep duration deviating from 7 to 8 h. To reveal possible trends in self-reported sleep duration and insomnia-related symptoms, we reanalyzed all available data from surveys carried out in Finland from 1972 to 2005. The main results were that a minor decrease of self-reported sleep duration has taken place in Finland, especially among working aged men. However, the size of the reduction (about 4%) was relatively small, approximately 5.5 min per each 10 years during the 33 years' time interval under study. The proportion of 7 h sleepers has increased and, correspondingly, the proportion of 8 h sleepers has decreased, but the extreme ends of the sleep duration distribution remained unchanged. Tentative evidence suggesting an increase in insomnia-related symptoms among working aged population during the last 10 years was found. In conclusion, the Finnish data during the past 33 years indicate a general decrease in self-reported sleep duration of about 18 min and an increase of sleep complaints, especially among the employed middle-aged population.
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