From the amount of money spent on sleep aids to the causes of lack of sleep, a Consumer Reports article details the issue of sleep deprivation in America.
Today, the problem of too little sleep, and the quest for more of it, is as acute as ever: 27 percent of people in a new Consumer Reports survey of 4,023 U.S. adults said they had trouble falling asleep or staying asleep most nights, and 68 percent—or an estimated 164 million Americans—struggled with sleep at least once a week.
A good night’s sleep can require everything from the practical (a cool, comfortable pillow) to the ethereal (a deep sense of calm and peace of mind). The modern marketplace has exploded with proffered solutions for people who can’t sleep, from mattresses to white-noise machines, sleeping pills to sleep coaches.
Americans spent an estimated $41 billion on sleep aids and remedies in 2015, and that’s expected to grow to $52 billion by 2020, according to Natana Raj, an analyst with BCC Research in Wellesley, Mass. The rub is that certain solutions don’t work as well as claimed—if they work at all.
Sleep drugs are arguably the most significant concern. About one-third of the people we surveyed had tried either a sleep drug (such as Ambien, which requires a prescription, or Sominex, which does not) or a dietary supplement (especially melatonin) at least once in the previous year.
