According to Dr. Jim Horne, a leading expert in sleep science, the answer is yes. Horne explained this in an article in the Daily Mail. Like the rest of the body, the brain regenerates during sleep. The more you use your brain during the day, the more you need to rest it while you sleep. Because women tend to multi-task more than men, they use more of their brains on a daily basis and therefore need more sleep. On average, women require about 20 minutes more sleep than men do.
Although we need more sleep than our male counterparts, many of us are falling short when it comes to both quantity and quality of sleep. Let’s look at each of these, starting with quantity.
Quantity, of course, refers to how much sleep you are getting. The recommendations vary by age group. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) makes recommendations based on data from the National Sleep Foundation and The American Academy of Sleep Medicine. Per the CDC, babies and young children need more sleep than adults, as do teens. For adults, the range is from 7-9 hours per night. Aim for at least 7 hours, and listen to your body. It will tell you if you need to get 8 or 9 hours.
While getting the recommended number of hours of sleep is important, it needs to be good quality sleep. Quality sleep has the following four attributes:
- Sleeping at least 85% of the time you are in bed
- Falling asleep in 30 minutes or less
- Waking no more than once per night
- Falling back to sleep in no more than 20 minutes after waking in the night
For women, sleep quantity and quality may be affected by several factors, including:
- Sleep disturbances during pregnancy due to excess weight, position of the fetus and the need to change normal sleeping positions
- Frequent waking due to hot flashes after menopause begins
- Being awakened and moved around on the bed by male partners, who tend to be larger than women
- Losing sleep by worrying about problems
Read Sleep Hygiene 101: Better Sleep for Better Health for information on how sleep impacts your health to get some tips for better quality sleep.