Residents of Ontario are the best sleepers in Canada, according to a recent sleep survey conducted by Douglasbed.ca, a Canadian online mattress brand.
Over 17% of Ontarians reported getting 8 hours of sleep or more per night on a regular basis. British Columbians (BC) came in second place, with around 16% of those surveyed claiming to consistently get over 8 hours. Next came the Albertans, for whom 13% said they were able to sleep for between 8 and 12 hours per night.
“Douglas is committed to providing all Canadians with a better night’s sleep, and in turn, a better quality of life. So, we wanted to know exactly how much sleep our fellow Canadians in other provinces were getting each night,” says Sam Prochazka, CEO of Douglas, in a release.
But which provinces had the most difficulty sleeping? Unfortunately, Maritime residents uniformly testified that they had trouble obtaining a good night’s sleep on a consistent basis.
At the very far end of the scale, a mere 8% of sleepers in New Brunswick reported getting their recommended 8 hours or more. Nova Scotians were only slightly better, with 9% saying that they slept 8t hours per night. Manitoba fell somewhere in between, with a little less than 12% of those polled declaring that they regularly achieve 8 hours.
Douglas also reports that innerspring mattress sleepers are 15% more likely to take 5 or more sick days per year when compared to memory foam mattress sleepers. As far as illness resulting in lost work time by province: Albertans are the most likely to take no sick days at all, whereas British Columbians take the most sick days, more than any other province in Canada.
“We weren’t surprised to find a substantial decrease in missed work days for individuals who own a memory foam mattress,” Prochazka says. This is in line with the rest of the poll results, which demonstrate a general trend toward better sleep quality, lower incidences of missed work days, and less sleep lost due to medical or health reasons for memory foam sleepers.
So, what about sleep hygiene? The Douglas sleep survey results showed that people in BC were less likely than their Ontario-based rivals to wash their sheets on a weekly basis. A total of 36% of respondents from Ontario reported washing their sheets at least once a week, while a mere 26% of British Columbians claimed a weekly washing of their linens.
