New Delhi, Mar 13 (IANSlife): Here's a surprise, there's a day in the year dedicated to sleeping. No, this is not in jest, today is "World Sleep Day" and a recent study revealed that Indians are sleeping less than they used to.

The sleep survey conducted by Centuary Mattresses discovered that overall nationally, the hours of sleep came down in most of the cities here.

Interestingly, across 10 cities in India, the survey found that collectively hours of sleep have come down in most of the cities, and people are not able to sleep for the required eight hours needed.

The findings are even more worrying when you look at the gender-wise numbers and discover that younger women in the age groups of 25-35 years are sleeping for 6.60 hours on weekends and 6.97 hours on weekdays in 2019 which is atleast an hour less then they did in the year 2018. Compared to them, young malse slept for 6.73 hours on weekdays and 6.58 Hours on weekends.

So are wealthier people getting better sleep? The duration of the sleep in people in the higher income group has also reduced to 6.74 Hours on weekends and 6.75 Hours on weekdays in 2019. Whereas there hasn't been a much change noticed in the case Middle income bracket with 7.46 Hours on weekends and 6.84 Hours on weekdays in 2019 against 7.45 hours and 7.29 hours a year before.

For most people, achieving quality sleep is still out of reach; the use of laptops, tablets, and smartphones continues to be the biggest deterrent in sleeping on time. Worrying about work and finance related issues also delayed sleep of around 15 percent of the people surveyed.

Irregular sleeping hours and the surface of sleep resulted in 42 percent of respondents mentioning struggling with back pain. In fact, due to deterioration in the quality as well as the duration of sleep one out of every fifth person (22 percent) mentioned that they do not feel rested on most days after waking up. Around 38 percent. also said that they feel sleepy at least 3 times in the day-time during a week.

While Chennai continues to lead the Sleeplessness in the country, Bangalore, Bhubaneswar, and Ahmedabad also recorded high numbers.

One should remember sleep is a an essential part of your well-being. The duration and the quality of the sleep can affect both your health and your output, so go ahead and don't feel guilty to snooze a little longer.