Cultural Influences on Sleep and Longevity

The amount of sleep people get varies across cultures, but does that mean their health differs too?

Researchers looked at countries with shorter average sleep durations to find out whether they suffered negative health outcomes – but they didn’t.

Instead, people who stuck closer to their cultural norms around sleep – independent of sleep duration – were healthiest.

Guest/s

• Professor Steven Heine,  Social and Cultural Psychology at the University of British Columbia

References

• Healthy sleep durations appear to vary across cultures