How Japanese women utilize health tech to improve their sleep

How much time do you usually spend sleeping every day? It can be difficult to maintain a work-life balance in our busy lives. Some of you may have cut back on your sleep time in order to make more time for everyday tasks, such as work, housework, childcare or studying.

According to a survey by OECD, the average sleep time of Japanese people is 7 hours and 22 minutes. This is the shortest among OECD member countries. Another research by the Japanese government shows that 63.2% of men and 71.7% of women sleep less than seven hours, indicating that women tend to sleep shorter while women tend to sleep more than men in other countries.

Why do Japanese women have the shortest sleep time in the world?

The reasons for the lack of sleep among Japanese people are often long working hours and stress from excessive tasks. Some people cut down on their sleep time to make some time to relax after working such long hours. Checking smartphones or computers before bedtime also affects the quality of sleep.

As for why women sleep less, one of the reasons is the persistent belief that housework and childcare are women’s jobs. In Japan, it has been quite common for women to resign from their jobs at the point of marriage, pregnancy and childbirth to focus on housework or childcare. However, since the 2000s, households with full-time housewives have been decreasing, and households with working couples have become the majority. (*1)

Although more men are becoming active in housework and childcare, it is not easy to change the beliefs deeply rooted in society. If working women have to do most of the childcare and housework, they have no choice but to reduce their sleep time.

Wearable health trackers are becoming popular to help improve sleep

There are various solutions to improve sleep. However, many people may not even think about their sleep qualities and quantities due to their busy lives. As a first step to solving this problem, wearable health trackers are becoming popular among Japanese women.

Wearable health trackers often look like watches and typically use sensors to keep track of physical activity, heart rate and sleep. The only thing users need to do to monitor their sleep is to wear the device while sleeping. In general, users can view the collected data from their smartphones. Most health trackers offer sleep scores to make it easy to understand your sleep quality.

The popular brands are Fitbit which is a pioneer of sleep tracking, Garmin which has a wide range of designs including outdoor, stylish and business, and Apple which has multiple functions in addition to a sleep tracker.

 

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Although these devices cannot directly solve health issues, they can provide visualizations of the quality of your sleep and other activities relevant to your health. Additionally, sharing the collected data with your partner can be a good opportunity to encourage each other and provide support.

*If you have any health concerns, it is recommended to consult with a doctor before using wearable health trackers.

*1 Annual changes in the number of dual-income households by Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare

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