Your health: The richer you are, the better you sleep

The richer you are, the better you sleep

More money, more sleep.

That's the take-away from a fascinating slice of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention looking at sleep levels by income group, The Washington Post reports. Crunching numbers from the 2013 National Health Interview Survey, CDC researchers found that the relationship between income and sleep is linear and positive.

Just under two-thirds of people living below the federal poverty line — $23,550 for a family of four in 2013 — reported getting more than six hours of sleep per night that year. But nearly three-quarters of people with incomes at 400 percent of the poverty level — $94,200 for that same family of four — reported getting that much sleep.

The CDC has called sleep deficiency a “public health epidemic,” and with good reason: “Persons experiencing sleep insufficiency are also more likely to suffer from chronic diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, depression and obesity, as well as from cancer, increased mortality, and reduced quality of life and productivity,” the centers wrote last year. And drowsy driving causes 80,000 traffic accidents each year, 1,000 of which are fatal.

The new CDC data illustrate how these burdens — like so many of our public health problems — fall disproportionately on the poor. The popular perception — particularly in the upper echelons of the income distribution — is that “the poor have it easy.” But these numbers add to the already large body of evidence showing that the very opposite is true.

One reason lower-income Americans aren't sleeping as much?

Many of them are holding down multiple jobs to make ends meet. A study released last year found that so-called “short sleepers” — those who get fewer than six hours per night — were mostly trading work hours for sleep hours. It also found that multiple job holders “were 61 percent more likely than others to report sleeping six hours or less on weekdays.”

Applying eyeliner inside lid a problem

It is a makeup staple for women around the world. But applying eyeliner incorrectly could damage the eyes, scientists have warned.

They say liner applied on the inside of the lash line is very likely to move into the eye itself and cause symptoms, the Daily Mail reports.

Eye doctors often see patients coming into clinics with eyeliner residue stuck to contact lenses — or trapped in the coating over their eyes called the tear film, said study leader Alison Ng of the University of Waterloo, Canada.

The waxes and pigments in makeup may bind to contact lenses, reducing vision quality and potentially even causing blurred vision.

Experts warn buildup of makeup on contact lenses can also irritate the eye.

Applying liner close to the eye also means the eyeliner can become seeded with bacteria.

Dr Ng added this is the first research to show that particles from pencil eyeliner move into the eye.

“We wanted to look at how differently eyeliner migrated into the tear film when applied in two different ways: inside the lash line and outside of the lash line,” she said.

For the study, three women aged between 26 and 30, with no known eye conditions, had their eyes filmed.

The volunteers were assigned to one of two groups.

One applied eyeliner inside the lash line, close to the eye, while the other applied eyeliner to the skin outside of the lash line, further from the eye.

They returned the next day and received eyeliner in the opposite location.

To test the effect of eyeliner, the researchers took video of each participant's eyes five to 10 minutes after applying makeup, then counted how many particles of eyeliner moved into the eye.

They found that between 15 and 30 percent more particles moved into the eye when eyeliner was applied to the inside of the lash line.

The makeup also moved more quickly into the eye when eyeliner was applied inside the lash line.