Women need more sleep: It's Official

According to research conducted by the Sleep Research Centre at Loughborough University, women need more sleep than men. Apparently women work their brains harder in the day resulting in them requiring around 20 minutes more sleep a night than men.

Women tend to really work the part of their brain called the ‘Cerebral Cortex’ which is responsible for intelligence, language, memory and consciousness, it seems that it is all down to women being able to multi task and spend their day constantly switching from one task to the other!

Deep sleep is the key to helping the Cerebral Cortex recover fully over night, which occurs in the 3rd & 4th stage of sleep. As women age they retain the function of the Cerebral Cortex for longer than men and therefore more of their shut eye is conducted in a deep sleep.

It seems though, that the majority of women are not getting the sleep they need to fully recuperate. Doctors have more sleep related problems reported from women than men. Common causes of sleeplessness tend to be disturbance from our male partners, such as movement and snoring.

The Sleep Research Centre conducted further research into women’s sleep, concluding that women now more frequently choose to have less sleep to have more time in the day, and when the Research Centre posed the question ‘If you were offered an extra hour a day how would you spend it?’ only 1 in 5 chose to spend the time in bed.

For those of us who do love our sleep, there is nothing like scientific proof to give us ladies a valid excuse to spend an extra 30 minutes in bed, while your other half gets up and makes you breakfast in bed!

March 11th 2010

Posted by: Feather & Black

Tagged with  sleep  women