Southern States Have More Sleep Issues

Can't sleep?  Turns out that it might be where you live!

Researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have put sleeplessness on the map — literally. The research team, analyzing nationwide data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has produced the first state-by-state sleep maps for the United States, revealing that residents of Southern states suffer from the most sleep disturbances and daytime fatigue, while residents on the West Coast report the least amount of problems. The results are published online in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine.

The study is the first of it's kind that translates geographic location into cause and effect of people's sleep patterns or problems.

The findings suggest that, in general, those in the South are most likely to report sleep disturbance and daytime fatigue, and those in the West are least likely. Of the states where data was collected, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, and West Virginia ranked in the highest bracket for each category. The researchers note that this finding is consistent with other geographic studies, showing that many of the states that report worse sleep and fatigue problems are the same states that tend to report higher prevalence of other conditions, such as obesity, and that the pattern differed slightly between men and women.

Sleepless in the South: Penn Medicine Study Discovers State and Regional Prevalence of Sleep Issues in the United States.