Human Body-Sleep System Interaction in Residence for University Students: Evaluation of Interaction Patterns Using a System to Capture Video and Software with Observation of Postural Behaviors During Sleep

The behavioral and postural habits and sleep rhythm of university students change depending on the academic period, either because it requires a different pace of study (academic activities) or other types of events but this has rarely been reported in the literature which would allow an analysis and evaluation of this behavior through sleep disorders. This paper presents a study whose objective was to investigate the human interaction with postural behaviors in the residences' bedroom of female university students during the periods in which the subjects were asleep, awake, out of bed, doing activities, using a pillow in different time periods and with ecological validation. A sample of 6964 observations, which corresponds to 196 sleep-hours of 12 university students, was classified into six Interaction Categories (IC). The results show that 28.7% of the participants presented the prone position as the most common postural behavior during sleep. During the image capture, participants answered a questionnaire about the perception of pain in the spine according to the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS). 100% of the students complained about back pain; 50% referred to the evening as the period in which the pain was more intense; 25% of participants reported that pain disrupted their sleep and; the biggest indication of median of pain was in the Lumbar region (3.33+ 1.231). This data is essential for health care professionals who can use this information to enable a reduction factor of complaints of back pain, to make recommendations with schools and universities to change the demands of academic activities by distributing them throughout the semester and not at the end of each period.