Recent Study Shows Why Women Need More Sleep Than Men

I have always been amazed at how quickly my sweet husband Michael can fall asleep. When we first got married, I would literally set a timer to see just how fast he would start to snore. The average? 30 seconds. Meanwhile, I'm over here tossing and turning not able to turn my brain off.

When it comes to sleep, studies have shown many differences in how and why men and women have such varying slumber habits. Recently, I came across results from a scientific study that I found veeeery interesting. The overall results were that women, on average, require more sleep than men.

Seven hours is how long experts recommend adults sleep each night. Of course, no two people are alike and some can feel fine on less or more shut eye depending on any number of variables. According to the Sleep Foundation:

A person’s age and stage in life, their mental and physical health, and their day-to-day responsibilities all affect how much sleep they need. It is less clear whether a person’s sex directly influences the amount of sleep they need, but research shows that females tend to sleep slightly more than males at every life stage, about 11 minutes on average.

So while being male or female doesn't definitively mean one sex will sleep longer than another every time, there are factors both biological and societal that play a part.

One being that women, while spending more time than men in deep sleep, are more likely to have fragmented sleep. For women, frequently waking up, struggling from insomnia, suffering from restless leg syndrome and other issues like Chronic pain from menstrual cramps or pregnancy can also cause sleep problems. Hormone levels, weight gain, and mental health are all things that determine quality of sleep in both men and women.

The other piece of the puzzle that I found most intriguing was that typical gender norms can determine sleep habits especially with young married couples with little children.

Research shows that women spend significantly more time than men on housework and caregiving responsibilities and that they’re generally expected to take care of any family needs that arise during the night. This has the potential to reduce the amount of time available for sleep, especially for working mothers.

Also reported was that approximately a third of women say that even when they get what they feel is a satisfactory amount of sleep, they still feel tired. This is possibly attributed to how often women's sleep cycles are interrupted.

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So fellas, the next time you notice your lovely lady is cranky or not herself, if her favorite treat doesn't cheer her up, you should definitely encourage her to go take a little nap.