The Hindu : International : Greatest sleepers

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Mar 11, 2005

International

International

Greatest sleepers

CANBERRA: For years, they have been regarded as the world's number one nation of fun-loving, pint-downing, party animals. But it seems they were pulling the wool over our eyes: Australians spend more time asleep than anyone else on the planet. According to a survey of global sleeping habits, nearly a quarter of all Australians hit the sack before 10 p.m., and 31 per cent say they like to get more than nine hours' shut-eye a night. By contrast the poll, which analysed the sleeping habits of 14,100 people in 28 different countries, showed that the Japanese survive on the least shut-eye — 41 per cent have less than six hours a night. And nobody stays up later than the Portuguese: 75 per cent refuse to get their head down till gone midnight, and 28 per cent are still going at 1 a.m. In the U.K., a mere 28 per cent of Britons stay up until after midnight, and 57 per cent struggle out of bed before 7 a.m. But this is strictly mid-table in the survey, which was conducted by pollsters ACNielsen. It concluded that ``our grandparents enjoyed a healthy average'' of nine hours sleep a night, but that the stresses, strains and opportunities of modern life have cut into our down time." — © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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