Indians, who have an average nightly sleep of 7 hours and 1 minute, have been found to be the second-most sleep-deprived people, after the Japanese, a study by fitness solutions firm Fitbit has found.
Although Indians have 1 hour and 46 minutes more sleep than the people of Japan, they sleep 48 minutes less than the average nightly sleep of Britons and 32 minutes less than Americans enjoy.
Indians also get 77 minutes of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep on average, which is the lowest in the world, just like Japanese who get the same amount of REM sleep on an average.
REM is a crucial aspect for emotion regulation, memory, and the peak stage of protein synthesis at the cellular level, which ensures that multiple processes in the body work properly, the report says.
The study also found that Indian users aged 75-90 had the least sleeping time (6 hours 35 minutes on an average) compared to other age groups, even though users in the age group of 18-25 went to bed more than an hour later (12.33 A.M.) than users in the 75-90 age group (11:22 PM).
It was also observed that Indians are the least active, walking an average of 6,533 steps daily, which is 3,600 steps less than the average of the most active – Hong Kong. The average active minutes, 32, also ranks as the lowest in the grid.
Other countries in the research include Japan, Singapore, Peru, Hong Kong, Mexico, Argentina, Italy, Spain, the United States, Chile, Germany, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland.