African-Americans who experience discrimination may be sleeping poorly. Research published in the American Academy of Sleep Medicine finds those who report being treated poorly also report poor sleep.
Of the nearly 4,000 African-American adults who participated in a long-term study of heart disease risk factors, discrimination was a strong determinant of short sleep duration and poor sleep quality, according Dr. Dayna Johnson of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.
Participants in her study who reported higher levels of discrimination slept 15 minutes less on average per night.
Dr. Michael Grandner, director of the Sleep and Health Research Program at the University of Arizona College of Medicine in Tucson, supports the finding — and says that in earlier research, exposure to racial discrimination was associated with worse sleep, even after taking stress and depression into account.
