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. 2020 Jun 15;17(12):4252.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph17124252.

Evaluation of Sleep Quality in a Disaster Evacuee Environment

Hitomi Ogata  1 , Momoko Kayaba  2 , Miki Kaneko  3 , Keiko Ogawa  1 , Ken Kiyono  3
Affiliations

Evaluation of Sleep Quality in a Disaster Evacuee Environment

Hitomi Ogata et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

Abstract

We aimed to evaluate sleep and sleep-related physiological parameters (heart rate variability and glucose dynamics) among evacuees by experimentally recreating the sleep environment of evacuation shelters and cars. Nine healthy young male subjects participated in this study. Two interventions, modeling the sleep environments of evacuation shelters (evacuation shelter trial) and car seats (car trial), were compared with sleep at home (control trial). Physiological data were measured using portable two-channel electroencephalogram and electrooculogram monitoring systems, wearable heart rate sensors, and flash glucose monitors. Wake after sleep onset (WASO) and stage shift were greater in both intervention trials than the control trial, while rapid-eye movement (REM) latency and non-rapid eye movement (NREM) 1 were longer and REM duration was shorter in the evacuation shelter trial than the control trial. Glucose dynamics and power at low frequency (LF.p) of heart rate variability were higher in the car trial than in the control trial. It was confirmed that sleep environment was important to maintain sleep, and affected glucose dynamics and heart rate variability in the experimental situation.

Keywords: car; evacuation shelter; glucose dynamics; heart rate variability; sleep.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest. The founding sponsor had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; and in the decision to publish the results.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Study protocol: schematic overview of the study protocol (top); time schedule of sleep interventions for subjects who always go to sleep at 24:00 (middle); and pattern diagram for each trial (bottom). All subjects ate the same meals; dinner was curry and rice; breakfast was a jelly drink. On the day of the experiment, subjects were restricted from caffeine drinks, alcohol consumption, strenuous exercise, and naps, and had restrictions on television and smartphone use from dinner to the end of the experiment the next day.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Time course of glucose from dinner to 3 h after breakfast. Mean values of blood glucose for nine subjects were plotted every 15 min. The black lines show data for the control trial, the open circles show data for evacuation shelter trials, and the closed circles show data for the car trial. Sleep hours are indicated in the gray zone.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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