Around 68 percent of the residents of Guangzhou in south China suffered from sleep disorders in 2006, making Guangzhou the most sleep-deprived city in a recent survey.

The Information Times reports around 58 percent of the adults in each of the cities in the survey admitted they suffered from a sleep disorder last year on average. Prominent market research company TNS conducted the survey across six Chinese cities, namely Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Tianjin, and Hangzhou.

Most of the adult respondents said they found it difficult to fall asleep and frequently woke up in the middle of the night.

More than 40 percent of the respondents in Guangzhou said they found it hard to sleep for a long time. Around 15 percent said they suffer from insomnia several times a week.

The sleep disorders were exacerbated because only 13 percent of the insomniacs sought treatment at hospitals, only 23 percent of which consulted other professional medical staff, like psychologists.

Psychiatrist Fan Changke from the Guangdong Provincial People's Hospital said insomnia is caused by stressful modern lifestyles, huge living pressures and improper sleeping habits.
 
Fan said the simplest way to judge if someone is suffering from a sleep disorder is to see whether he or she can rise at the correct time. He added the best way to treat insomnia is to correct bad sleeping habits and suggested people go to sleep before 11 o'clock at night.

(CRI March 23, 2007)