If there’s one thing health experts agree on, it’s the importance of sleep for good health. A bad night’s sleep opens you up to higher risk of heart disease, obesity, and stroke. A lack of sleep also leads to decreased physical activity and reduced mental acuity. As a result, various world agencies and private companies have conducted studies over the past several years as a way of tracking national health. The results are pretty consistent year over year. Some of the best sleepers in the world are in New Zealand, Finland, Australia, and the Netherlands. Most of these countries average over 7 hours and 30 minutes of sleep nightly. Not surprisingly from the country that has a word for working to death a primary cause is work. Workers in Japan are expected to put in overtime, with many working on the weekends. It’s no surprise, given what we know about the impact of sleep on mental health, that this leads to some workers taking their own lives out of exhaustion and desperation. On the plus side, according to OECD data, a growing awareness of the dangers of overwork has led to a decrease in overall work hours. The average worker put in 1,607 hours annually, down from a high of 1,745 hours in 2012. However, that hasn’t led to a concomitant rise in sleep time. “Sleep deprivation isn’t just a threat to your future health,” he argued. “It leads to lower work performance tomorrow. If you want to take your health into your own hands, sleep is the first place to start.” Not surprisingly, sleep deprivation hits women in Japan harder than men. We’ve documented the uneven burden of housework on Japanese women, who bear 4.76 hours more housework and child-rearing duties than their husbands. That’s one of the largest gender gaps for any developed nation.
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The Eepiest Nation Why Japan Sleep Problem May Soon Get Worse
