No abstract

No abstract

The prevalence of daytime sleepiness and background factors associated with it were investigated in a study carried out at the UKK Institute. The inquiry took the form of a questionnaire mailed to 1600 people of middle age. Daytime sleepiness was found to be associated with disturbed night sleep. Women were more tired than men, but men slept more frequently during the day. Those suffering from tiredness complained of poor health more than other respondents. Traffic accidents and other mishaps attributable to tiredness had occurred in 1.3% of cases, and almost 5% of male respondents had dozed off while driving at least five times in their lives. The findings indicate a need for increased attention to disturbance of sleep and daytime sleepiness in routine health screening.

Good sleep is part of good quality of life. Sleep disturbances are rather common and they reflect various somatic and psychic diseases. Sleep length is associated with mortality. According to several epidemiological surveys short sleepers and long sleepers seem to have poorer life expectancy than those sleeping 7-8h/night [2,4,8]. Also myocardial infarctions are more common among those sleeping more than 10 h or less than 6 h/night than among those sleeping 7-8h [5].In an epidemiological study based on a population of 31140 Finnish adults, the percentage of poor sleepers increased from 4.6% among 18-to 29-year-old men to 19.4% among men older than 60 years of age. In women the respective percentages were 4.2% and 23.2%. In that study [6], as in some other studies [1], the respondents were asked if they regarded their sleep as "good," "fairly good," "fairly poor," "poor," or "could not say." Poor sleepers were those who considered their sleep as "poor" or'''fairly poor" [6].Based on the same population the sleep quality of 10778 Finnish adults aged 35-59 years was ascertained in a postal questionnaire in 1975. In that age group 38% were good sleepers, 50% were fairly good sleepers, and 12% were poor sleepers. Individuals were followed for 6 years until the end of 1981 using the computerized nationwide registries to collect death certificates and hospital records [3]. The age-adjusted risk ratios (RRs) for poor sleep compared with good sleep in natural death was 2.6 for men (P < 0.001) and 0.9 (NS) for women. The risk ratio of violent deaths for poor sleep compared with good sleep was 4.6 (P < 0.001) for men and 2.6 (NS) for women. The RR of ischemic heart disease was 2.0 (P < 0.01) for men and 2.2 (P < 0.01) for women. The results of that prospective study [3] show that poor sleep quality is an indicator of mental and somatic disease.Relationship of sleep quality and subjective health status was studied in an urban population in Tampere, Finland. Instead of a simple question about sleep quality we have started to construct better indices of sleep quality [7].A sample of 1600 Finnish adults, aged 36-50 years, was randomly selected from the municipal health files of Tampere. Subsamples of 200 men and of

The health‐related physical activity of Finns was studied during the 1980s by analysing changes in activity in a 10‐year follow‐up of a representative population cohort aged 20–65 years at the onset of the study. The proportion of apparently healthy people exercising at least twice a week for fitness and health increased from about 40% to over 50%. The increase was particularly large among women and young people. Occupational physical activity, education and marital status did not affect the trends. In contrast, regular vigorous exercise remained unchanged. These findings are consistent with other observations showing a steady increase in health‐related physical activity among adult Finns during the past 20 years. However, in terms of the health potential of exercise, a majority of the population remains less than optimally active.