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In Barcelona, we have lost 30 minutes of sleep in 40 years, according to a recent survey by the Barcelona Health Agency. Deciphering a worrying phenomenon.
Barcelona residents have gone from getting 7.5 hours of sleep in 1980 to only around 7 hours today. A health problem which can be explained by a certain delay in Spain in this area. If in the United States, a certain number of prevention campaigns on the quality and duration of sleep exist, this is not the case in France or in Spain, explains to Equinox, Pierre Philip, Head of the Department of Medicine of sleep at the University of Bordeaux. The famous annual survey by the Public Health Agency only began to question Barcelona residents about the quality of their sleep in 2021. And it turns out that 23.5% of men and 31.6% of women say have poor sleep quality.
This lack of prevention and information on the subject – which still represents around 25 years of our lives – leads to poor sleep health. However, excess fatigue can lead to serious problems such as myocardia, strokes, hypertension, obesity, diabetes, mental health problems or degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, recalls the Catalan Public Health Agency
Photo : 10 000 hours
“I was tired all the time, dark circles at the bottom of my ankles and therefore little energy”testifies Hugo, 27 years old, exhausted by the noise at the bottom of his building. This Frenchman from Barcelona who lives near the Verdaguer metro in the Gràcia district lives above a bar. Gradually and now after four months in the apartment, this salesman from the southwest has come to terms with the idea that his nights are complicated: “you get used to it a little, but that doesn’t stop you from waking up almost every night (despite earplugs) because of a scooter or the closing of the bar downstairs.”
Noise is therefore responsible for the inconvenience that Hugo experiences, and this is not surprising when we know that a large part of the streets of Barcelona have decibel levels well above the limit recommended by the WHO. Firstly because Barcelona has a lot of road traffic, but above all because the insulation of buildings is poor. “My windows are super thin, single glazed, which filters absolutely no decibels”explains Hugo.
Sleep: a matter of social classes
The solution for Hugo would therefore be to better insulate his apartment, except that this is (very) expensive. “The poor have more inconveniences and lower quality of sleep than the ultra-rich”adds Professor Philip. The cause therefore is this less good insulation but also their place of living which impacts the duration of sleep: less well-off people live further from city centers and get up earlier than others to go to work.
This is also the conclusion of the Public Health Agency. Indeed, the graphs are clear: in 2021 (latest data available), nearly 40% of the poorest households did not have access to a sufficient number of hours of sleep compared to 22% of the wealthiest households.
Photo : Public Health Agency Barcelona
So sleep is a matter of social classes? Not only that. It is also a matter of gender and social construction, since women are those who sleep the least well, the survey further informs us. This is partly explained by the higher rate of anxiety felt by women, often due to a mental load linked to housework and home organization.
Barcelona and the problem of social jet-lag
To compensate for poor sleep health, the professor is categorical. Even if what Hugo experiences is quite unbearable, it is not the number of awakenings per night that influences rest, but rather the regularity of it. « The duration of sleep is not something very relevant. When we look at health factors, it is rather the irregularity which poses a problem and which destroys the cardiovascular system. This is what we call social jet-lag,” explains the one who popularizes the subject of sleep on Instagram, for his 30,000 subscribers. Social jet lag is the discordance between our need for sleep and what our daily life imposes on us.
In Barcelona, this dissonance is particularly true. Indeed, the city is constantly buzzing and invites you to go out, whether during the week or at the weekend. Except that as the professor explains, “the best advice in terms of public health is to regulate your sleep, allowing it during the week and on weekends”. To summarize, you should go to bed and wake up at the same time every day. A difficult routine to establish but necessary to be in good health.
And what about the nap? “Especially not,” explains the professor, « sIf you need to take a nap, it’s a danger marker for your sleep”.
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