Sri Lankans don’t sleep as much as they want to!

Thursday, 20 February 2014 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Are we sleep-deprived as a nation? This interesting possibility was discovered from global research conducted by AIA Group, Asia’s leading life insurer, in Sri Lanka and across 15 of its markets in the region. The research focusing on attitudes towards healthy living was a forerunner to creating awareness among Asians of the need to lead a lifestyle that improved fitness. The survey covered over 10,000 interviews in the region. They were face-to-face interviews capturing the general population aged 18 to 65 years across all incomes and education levels.

The primary objective of the survey was to discover the drivers that impacted on people’s life expectancy and health. The findings were of great significance to Sri Lankans who are among the world’s fastest aging populations and are living longer than people in most other Asian nations. 99% of those interviewed agreed that ‘living a healthy life is important’ rating fitness highest on a scale of 1 to 10. However they didn’t maintain a healthy lifestyle. One aspect of their behavior that affected fitness was the fact that they slept only an average of 6.7 hours although they desired an average of 7.6 hours. In contrast, our neighbours in India sleep soundly for 7.8 hours a night and the sleep gap they experience (0.4 vs 0.9) is much less than for Sri Lankans. Other behaviours of Sri Lankans that impacted negatively on health and fitness were lack of exercise, unhealthy diet, not having medical checkups, and relying on watching TV to de-stress. It was noteworthy that 64% of Sri Lankans spent time with their families to de-stress – more so than the rest of the region where the average was 42%. The total score of 63 achieved by Sri Lankans in the healthy living index, placed the nation in the second tier and below nations such as Vietnam, China and Macau. India scored the lowest in the region with 55 and Vietnam scored the highest with 70. Some of the interesting key findings and conclusions from this research is that Internet and social networking were on the increase and becoming addictive, emerging as a threat to good health, although this was not as high as in more developed markets, “The AIA Healthy Living Index Survey is both timely and an eye opener that could be used to trigger a positive behaviour in the region, especially in Sri Lanka where we hope to focus strongly on promoting healthy living as an important corporate responsibility activity that would enrich the nation and tangibly improve health and fitness” said Shah Rouf, the Chief Executive Officer of AIA Insurance in Sri Lanka. The company will evaluate the research findings and use it to formulate activities that would enhance the health and fitness of the community.