Do men and women sleep differently, and why?

Agreeing with the same, Dr Vipul Gupta, chief of neurointerventional surgery and co-chief of the Stroke Unit, Artemis Hospital, Gurugram said, “Women tend to have slightly better or deeper sleep quality. They also tend to sleep longer than men and naturally have a different sleep time than men as they tend to sleep earlier than men and also wake up before them.”

The expert elaborated that the difference between the sleep patterns of men and women can also be seen during the various stages of sleep. “The first three stages of sleep are considered non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. Of these, the first two stages are of light sleep and the third stage is of deep sleep,” he said.

How do these stages differ for men and women? “Women tend to spend more time in the third stage deep sleep than men and tend to spend less time in stage one, the lightest sleep. In this way, women tend to have a deeper and better sleep quality than men. Due to this difference in the quality of sleep, it has been seen that women tend to perform better than men even when they have slept less as compared to a man who hasn’t had a proper sleep,” Dr Gupta added further.

As such, women tend to sleep longer than men, ranging from 5 minutes to around 30 minutes or so. But, why does it happen? According to Piedmont Healthcare, this is because women use more of their actual brains, and their brains are more complex than that of men. “One of the theories is that because women use the front of the brain — the prefrontal cortex — due to multitasking, they tend to sleep longer than men,” concurred Dr Gupta.

sleep disorders are more commonly seen among women (Source: Getty Images/Thinkstock)

However, during different phases of their lives, women experience several sleep disturbances due to hormonal changes, experts said. “The hormonal changes in women are profound during the menstrual cycle, pregnancy and during menopause,” Dr Viswesvaran Balasubramanian, Consultant, Interventional Pulmonology and Sleep Medicine, Yashoda Hospitals, Hyderabad said.

Explaining how hormones play a key role in determining a woman’s sleep, he added, “During the menstrual cycle, major changes in the production of hormones — specifically estrogen and progesterone — occur, which alter the physical and emotional status disrupting sleep. Pregnancy in women affects sleep timing and sleep architecture.”

Dr Balasubramanian shared that nearly 50 per cent of pregnant women are believed to experience insomnia-like symptoms that may persist in the postpartum period as well. “Menopause, which is associated with high flushes and night sweats, can have a profound influence on sleep and can manifest as circadian rhythm disorders,” he added.

Agreeing, Dr Gupta said, “The presence of different biological moments in a woman’s life, such as menstruation, pregnancy or menopause, cause hormonal shift which makes women much more likely to have disturbances in their sleep.”

Despite the fact that women tend to sleep longer and better than men, sleep disorders are more commonly seen among women, experts said. “Although in the earlier decades, women tend to sleep better and longer than men as time passes by, women get more prone to sleep disorders. The most common one is insomnia, the inability to sleep. This particularly becomes more common after the age of 40. Also, there are other, uncommon sleep disorders such as restless leg syndrome in which the person tends to have restless legs which keep on moving around throughout the night. It happens more commonly in women,” Dr Gupta said, adding that sleep disorders such as obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), however, are more common in men as compared to women.

A study, published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, corroborated this claim as it found that women are more likely than men to have more severe symptoms of depression, trouble sleeping at night, and excessive daytime sleepiness. Women also have a higher degree of difficulty concentrating and remembering things due to sleepiness or tiredness.

“We found that females were more likely to have sleeping disorders associated with daytime sleepiness. Females were also likely to feel more affected by the burden of their symptoms,” said co-author Dr John Malouf, founder of SleepGP sleep clinic in Coolangatta, Queensland, Australia.

(Next in the series: Decoding the link between cancer and sleep)

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