Study Shows Women Need More Sleep Than Men – Science

Competitive tiredness is a sport familiar to most couples. Men and women frequently disagree about who gets the most sleep, who finds it the least exhausting to tend to a crying child in the night and who has the most energy left for chores.

Indeed, Arianna Huffington, a leading U.S. commentator, has declared women’s sleep ‘the next feminist issue’, arguing their lack of sleep affects their judgment, creativity and ability to realise their full potential.

But do women really need more sleep than men?

Now, thanks to Britain’s leading sleep expert, that argument can finally be settled. In fact, women need 20 minutes more shut-eye than the average man. And that’s down to a woman’s busy, multi-tasking brain.

‘One of the major functions of sleep is to allow the brain to recover and repair itself,’ says Professor Jim Horne, director of the Sleep Research Centre at Loughborough University and author of Sleepfaring: A Journey Through The Science Of Sleep.

Women need 20 minutes more shut-eye than the average man

‘During deep sleep, the cortex – the part of the brain responsible for thought memory, language and so on – disengages from the senses and goes into recovery mode.

‘The more of your brain you use during the day, the more of it that needs to recover and, consequently, the more sleep you need.

‘Women tend to multi-task – they do lots at once and are flexible – and so they use more of their actual brain than men do. Because of that, their sleep need is greater.

‘A man who has a complex job that involves a lot of decision-making and lateral thinking may also need more sleep than the average male – though probably still not as much as a woman.

This is because women’s brains are wired differently from men’s and are more complex, so their sleep need will be slightly greater.

‘The average is 20 minutes more, but some women may need slightly more or less than this.’

Professor Horne believes the differing sleep needs may explain why a man’s brain ages faster than a woman’s.

‘A typical 75-year-old woman has a comparable brain age to a 70-year-old man,’ he says.

‘We are unsure why. The fact that a woman’s brain tends to get more time to relax and repair itself may explain it.’

How much sleep individual men and women need varies greatly.

‘The average adult needs between six and eight hours of sleep a night,’ says Professor Horne. ‘But individual needs differ greatly – some people can get by easily on six hours while others can’t.

‘What is important is that people have enough sleep to ensure they do not feel excessively sleepy in the day.’

The problem is that women might need more sleep than men, but they aren’t getting it. A study carried out by scientists in North Carolina found that women suffer from a lack of sleep more than men.

This is partly because women’s sleep tends to be lighter and more easily disturbed than men’s, according to the American Academy Of Sleep Medicine.

Arianna Huffington has declared women’s sleep ‘the next feminist issue’

Some women suffer sleep disturbances as they go through pregnancy due to the weight and position of the baby.

Older women can sleep restlessly during the menopause, often as a result of hot flushes, but their sleep patterns normally return to normal once it is over.

‘The most important, refreshing type of sleep is deep sleep, which occurs early on in the night,’ says Professor Horne.

‘After that, sleep becomes lighter and we have found from our studies that you start to become more sensitive to noise.

‘However, you are especially sensitive to noises or words that have some emotional significance to you.

‘So, for example, if someone whispers your name, you are more likely to wake up than if someone says a word completely unconnected to you.

‘Mother’s minds are sensitive to the sound of their child crying from babyhood onwards, so that is often why they wake when a youngster stirs – yet a man sleeps through it.

‘Also our studies have found that when people share a bed, the lighter one tends to get moved around and woken up by the heavier one – normally the man.

Women suffer from a lack of sleep more than men

‘So a woman’s sleep can be more disturbed because of her bed partner.’

Once they’ve woken up, women find it much harder to get back to sleep than men, according to research from the University of Surrey.

The study found that 18 per cent of women claim to have a bad night’s sleep at least five days a week compared with only 8 per cent of men.

Most reported having difficulty sleeping because they were worrying about problems.

Yet despite a general feeling that we are all tired all the time, most people – men and women – do get enough sleep.

A Dutch study last year found women in particular often underestimate the amount of sleep they get.

‘People will tell you they get only five hours’ sleep a night,’ says Professor Horne. ‘Yet if you question them further, they tell you they have an hour’s nap in the afternoon, which puts them up to six hours. That is probably fine for most people.

‘That’s how Mrs Thatcher used to survive, though in times of crisis she used to make do with four hours.

‘Winston Churchill was the same. He famously slept only four hours a night, but used to have two-hour siestas every day.

‘The important thing is not to worry about not having enough sleep. If you have a bad night’s sleep or a whole night without sleep, you don’t need to go to bed for 14 hours.

‘It is only the deep, refreshing sleep that you need to catch up on, so you need to try to recoup only about a third to a half of what you missed.’

Source: Dailymail.co.uk