About one in five Taiwanese suffers from insomnia, with more than 10 percent of those having resorted to sleeping pills as a temporary measure, according to a survey released by the Taiwan Society of Sleep Medicine yesterday.
The telephone-based poll, conducted between March 5 and Monday last week among people aged 20 to 64 in Taipei, New Taipei City, Taichung and Kaohsiung found that 20.2 percent of the respondents have trouble sleeping at night, representing no apparent growth in the incidence rate of insomnia in the country over the past decade.
“Among them, 48.1 percent of those polled complain about waking up earlier than scheduled, followed by 38.9 percent who said they are unable to fall asleep within half an hour and 26.3 percent who are troubled by the difficulty of falling asleep again after waking up in the middle of the night,” Chang Gung Memorial Hospital Sleep Center clinical psychologist Wu Chia-shuo (吳家碩) told a press conference in Taipei yesterday.
Wu said the poll also showed that people aged 60 to 64 (29.4 percent) and females (21.3 percent) are more prone to experiencing sleeping difficulties than younger people (ranging from 17.7 to 21.1 percent) and males (19.1 percent).
In addition, among the 12.6 percent of respondents who turn to sleeping pills to assuage their symptoms, 16.8 percent are women compared with 8.1 percent of men, Wu said.
While sleeping tablets can offer a temporary solution to insomnia, Wu said 85.85 percent of the respondents who take such medications are most concerned about the potential risk of drug dependence, followed by health risks to the liver and kidneys (83 percent) and the effect on cognitive function (67.9 percent).
Taiwan Society of Sleep Medicine president Lin Chia-mo (林嘉謨) said the survey also indicates a link between the use of electronic devices before sleep and insomnia among respondents in the 20-to-49 age group.
“About 53.3 percent of the respondents who suffer from sleeping problems said they habitually use tablet devices before bed, compared with 47.6 percent of their non-insomniac counterparts,” Lin said.
The survey collected 1,074 valid samples and has a margin of error of 3 percent.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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