How Can Family Scholars Advance Understanding of Sleep and Health?

Abstract

Over the past decade, clinical, epidemiological and biological research has provided strong evidence for the role of sleep health as a fundamental component of health and well-being. Furthermore, insufficient sleep quantity or quality and sleep disorders are associated with all-cause mortality, chronic heart disease, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, obesity and cancer, as well as mood disorders and behavioral and cognitive problems. The ability to measure sleep across population groups and over time is needed to further our understanding of the role of sleep in health and well-being. Sleep per se is a complex neurobehavioral state that is determined by homeostatic and circadian processes as well as environmental forces, and has both behavioral and physiological manifestations. Although sleep state is most precisely characterized using electroencephalography (EEG), single night EEG data do not provide information on the spectrum of sleep behaviors that occur in everyday life and that influence day-to-day functioning and predilection to chronic diseases. With an increasing understanding of the intersection between sleep and health and well-being, there has come the recognition that sleep is a multi-dimensional construct. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)