Women More Likely to Experience Sleep Problems than Men

Lisa Franchi February 13, 2014

Women spend more time in bed than men. Even so, they tend to experience more sleep difficulties – a new study found.

The research was based on the data by the European Prospective Investigation of Cancer (EPIC)-Norfolk prospective cohort which involved 8,480 people between ages 45 and 90 who were surveyed from 2006 to 2007.

Cambridge University researchers found that 39.6 per cent of women never had any trouble falling asleep, compared with 63.3 per cent of men. However, they tend to experience more problems, and the most common complaint was early awakening or middle insomnia. In the study, 14.7 per cent of female respondents reported getting awake in the middle of the night whilst 11.7 per cent of male respondents did.

Furthermore, 14.7 per cent of women had trouble falling asleep again compared with 9 per cent of men. Said problems were less common among those who were in good health, those who were working, who had higher education levels and who were younger.

The researchers also found that women spend a longer time in bed than men, but spend less time sleeping. In particular, they spend 15 minutes longer in bed but sleep for 11 minutes less.

Published in the journal Sleep Medicine, findings revealed that women in poor health had a worse proportion of time in bed to time spent sleeping. And people with a lot of sleep issues, including trouble falling asleep, waking up in the middle of the night and having trouble going back to sleep, had the lowest sleep proportion, while those who didn’t have any of these sleep problems had the highest sleep proportion.

Other findings showed that the average time people went to bed each night was 10.41 pm and the average time they wake up in the morning was 7.17 am. On weekends, people sleep 12 minutes later and woke up 27 minutes later. They also spend 1.5 hours longer in bed, on average, than they do actually sleeping in bed. Meanwhile, working people spend less time in bed on weekdays and older people spend a longer time in bed, but spend less time sleeping.

Source of this article:

Women Spend a Longer Time In Bed, But Get Less Sleep Than Men: Study