Women Need More Sleep Than Men – Really!

Have you ever got into an argument with your husband regarding your sleep and your desire to sleep more? Or have you got up grumpy just because you were interrupted while sleeping … well research states that women need more sleep than men owing to the multi tasking brain of a woman.

Professor Jim Horne, professor at Sleep Research Centre at Loughborough University says that sleep allows the brain to repair and recover itself. He also states that the amount of brain used is directly proportional to more sleep. He clearly says that women tend to be multi-tasking and are more flexible with doing lots at one time thus using much more brain activity than men, thereby, leading them to sleep more. In case a man has a job which involves him to think a lot, making decisions might also require more sleep than the average males, but not as much as a woman.

The reason for this is that a woman’s brain is connected differently than a man’s and is much more complex thus leading them to require more sleep. Professor Horne believes that “20 minutes is the average time required more but there are chances that some women might require less or more than this.” Also, according to him the most refreshing sleep is deep sleep which usually happens in the early hours of night.

A study carried out by the scientists of North Carolina found that women suffer lack of sleep more as compared to men. This is the fact that they need more sleep but cannot get it. As per the American Academy Of Sleep Medicine women are light sleepers and tend to get disturbed more easily than men.

Women suffer sleep disturbances throughout their life which affect the quality and quantity of their sleep. A research by University of Surrey states that if women are woken once they find it very difficult to get back to bed. The factors which lead to their sleep fluctuations are:

• Pregnancy due to the position and weight of the baby
• Menopause also causes difficulty in sleeping due to hot flashes
• Being moved in sleep or woken up
• Waking up on hearing a child’s cry
• Feelings of anger, depression and hostility
• Worrying and losing sleep

Dr Robert Breus, Sleep expert says, “We found that women had more depression, women had more anger, and women had more hostility early in the morning.”

Researchers have stated, “We found that for women, poor sleep is strongly associated with high levels of psychological distress and greater feelings of hostility, depression, and anger. In contrast, these feelings were not associated with the same degree of sleep disruption in men.”

So ladies now that you know the reason behind your grumpiness and tiredness get some sleep without any guilt...

By Shubhra Rastogi

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