World Sleep Day: Indians take poor sleep on an avearge, says Fitbit research

It’s World Sleep Day and Fitbit has revealed that Indians are poorest sleepers in the world taking a sleep of 6.55 hours in a night on an average. Fitbit data sleep statistics from January 10 to December 2016, also revealed that Asians get less sleep on average than their American and European counterparts.

Of the 18 countries from which the data was collected, people in New Zealand and the UK get the most take a good sleep on average per night.

Well a good sleep is very essential as diet and exercise in maintaining our overall health. Institute of Medicine, (US) Committee on Sleep Medicine and Research tells that good sleep protects against cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity, to boosting neurocognitive functions, mental health and longevity.

While a recent study Need For Sleep, found that Indian teens who did not take a sufficient sleep performed worst cognitively than the teens of their age group who had recommended amount of sleep.

Fitbit is introducing two dynamic sleeping tools that are to be launched later in March. The two tools are Sleep Stages and Sleep Insights, that will provide information on sleep quality while giving advice on how to improve sleep patterns. Sleep Stages uses heart rate variability in order to take out an estimate of the amount of time spent in light, deep and REM sleep, incuding time awake each night, to better understand sleep quality.

While Sleep Insights is to provide personalized guidance on how to improve sleep and is based on Fitbit data gained over 3 billion nights of logged sleep.

By better knowing sleep quality and patterns, users can make lifestyle changes to improve sleep over time, like diet, exercise winding down before bed and maintaining a consistent sleep schedule.

"From helping maintain a healthy immune system, to preserving your cognitive functions and managing a healthy weight, your sleep - or lack of - plays a critical role," said Dr. Allison Siebern, Stanford University and Fitbit Advisory Panel Sleep Expert.

"Fitbit's new sleep features use a scientific-based approach to show your sleep patterns over time, and provide you with validated, actionable guidance to help you make changes in your daily routine to achieve greater quality sleep - and in turn improve your overall health. Given the comfort and accessibility of this product, it's one of the most valuable and useful sleep tracking solutions available to consumers outside of a sleep lab."