Southerners most likely to be fatigued

PHILADELPHIA, Feb. 28 (UPI) -- A state-by-state sleep map revealed residents of Southern U.S. states suffer from the most sleep disturbances and daytime fatigue, researchers said.

Lead author Michael A. Grandner of the Center for Sleep and Circadian Neurobiology at Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania said the findings suggested in general those in the South were most likely to report sleep disturbance and daytime fatigue. Those in the West were least likely to experience fatigue.

Of the states where data was collected, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama and West Virginia ranked in the highest bracket for worse sleep and fatigue problems.

The study evaluated state-based prevalence of self-reported sleep disturbance and daytime fatigue in 36 U.S. states using data from 157,319 people who took part in the 2006 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System -- a telephone survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"The take-home message from this study is that different regions of the country sleep better than others," Grandner said in a statement. "We should begin to use this data to track patterns of poor sleep and try to understand why these patterns occur. Sleep is such an important part of overall health, we need to do everything we can to help give a good night's sleep to those in the highest-risk regions."

The findings were published online in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine.