Impact of Ramadan on sleep quality and habits: Comparative study between sick and healthy populations

Objective

Fasting Ramadan can affect the normal circadian pattern, especially in terms of sleep times and patterns. The objective was to analyze sleep quality and habits in diseased and healthy population using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) both during and outside of Ramadan.

Materials and methods

A cross-sectional descriptive study was carried out on 240 subjects (cardiovascular diseases [CVD], diabetes [DM]) and 120 healthy subjects. Data entry and processing were performed with R. 3.2.4 software. The significance level was 0.05.

Results

Regarding fasting, 88.33% of subjects with CVD fasted during Ramadan against 55.83% of subjects with DM (P > 0.05). PSQI results showed that subjects with CVD and DM were poor sleepers (PSQI > 5), regardless of the period during or outside Ramadan, unlike healthy subjects who had a good quality of sleep during Ramadan (PSQI ≤ 5). Sleep latency did not change for all subjects regardless of the period (P > 0.05). While the duration of sleep was always higher during Ramadan despite the population (P < 0.05).

Conclusion

The observance of Ramadan influenced the potential duration of sleep, which was found to be longer during the holy month. However, no significant impact was observed on the quality of sleep of diseased subjects, nor on sleep latency for all subjects.