india

Updated: Oct 30, 2019 03:03 IST

India is the second country after Japan to get the least sleep, with an average nightly sleep of 7 hours 1 minute, shows data released by Fitbit, a leading brand of fitness-tracking products.

The Japanese sleep the least, getting an average of 6 hours and 47 minutes of shuteye every night, showed sleep data from across 18 countries of at least 10.5 billion nights between August 1, 2018 and July 31, 2019. Indians were among the least active people in the world, walking an average of 6,533 steps each day, which is 3,600 steps lesser than the average of the most active country – Hong Kong.

“A healthy adult needs an average of 7.5 to 8 hours of sleep, but changing lifestyles is resulting in disturbed sleep patterns. There’re several distractions in the form of gadgets, internet etc that I’d say leads to insufficient sleep in about 80% of the people,” says Dr JC Suri, former head, pulmonary and sleep medicine, Safdarjung Hospital.The 77 minutes of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, a phase where the sleeper dreams vividly, on average is the lowest in the world for Indians. The REM sleep is a crucial aspect for the peak stage of protein synthesis at the cellular level, which ensures that multiple processes work properly.

Most Indians spend 57 minutes awake on an average each night they sleep, representing close to 13.5% of their nightly sleep.The most sleep-deprived age-group is between 75-90 years (6 hours 35 minutes on average). “It’s important to get to the cause for improving the sleep pattern,” adds Suri.