As I’ve discussed in previous blogs (see list below), most people (whether children, teens, or adults) are simply not getting enough sleep.  And now a couple of studies are providing more stark proof of what we’re doing to ourselves. The Centers for Disease Control is putting new numbers on this problem.

The AP reported, “More than a third of US adults sleep less than seven hours a night, and many of them report troubles concentrating, remembering and even driving,” according to statistics from two studies in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).

In one study, about “35 percent of people surveyed in 12 states said they slept less than seven hours a night, on average.”

MedPage Today noted that although the analysis “included only one year’s worth of data, a previous study found that the proportion of adults getting fewer than seven hours of sleep per night increased from 1985 to 2004.”

The study authors “attributed the increase at least in part to greater technology use and shift work.”

CNN in its “The Chart” blog reported that in the other MMWR sleep study, 38% of survey respondents “said they’d unintentionally dozed off during the day at least once in the previous month.”

Moreover, 5% of the respondents “said they’d nodded off or had actually fallen asleep while driving. ‘If you don’t get enough sleep, it definitely impacts your functioning, your memory, response time,'” said study author Lela McKnight-Eily, PhD, “an epidemiologist and clinical psychologist with the CDC’s National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Heath Promotion.”

HealthDay added that the “48 percent reported snoring.”

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal “Health Blog,” the findings were based on sleep surveys conducted in 2009 with 74,571 adults in 12 states. WebMD also summarized the two sleep studies in this week’s MMWR.

Meanwhile, noted the Los Angeles Times , “Booster Shots” blog, the CDC reports were released to coincide with “National Sleep Awareness Week.” And let’s hope no one annoyingly asks: ‘Got sleep?'”

Want to get a better night’s sleep? See my blog, “Ten tips for getting a better night’s sleep.”

Here are some of my other blogs on sleep:

• Lack of sleep ‘linked to early death’
• To Not Sleep, Perchance to Shorten Your Life
  
• Lack of sleep linked to risky precancerous colon polyps
• ‘Beauty sleep’ turns out to be true, says study
• Strategies for Getting a Good Night’s Sleep
  
• Six doctor-recommended sleep aids
  
• A natural medicine combo to treatment insomnia seems too good to be true