Women Need More Sleep, Wake Up Feeling Worse
What’s the story, morning glory? (Image via Shutterstock)
For women who sleep long hours but wake up cursing the day, there’s an app for that — or at least an app that corroborates your experience. The alarm-clock app Sleep Cycle gathered stats on one million users across 50 nations over nine months, and found that women aged 16 to 55 are getting more sleep than men, QZ.com reports. But in most countries (Ukraine, Portugal, and Colombia excepted) they self-report worse morning moods than do men. Why the grumpiness? Well, it echoes earlier Duke University research that women need more sleep, and will suffer mentally and physically without it, as Australia’s News Network reported in 2013.
“We found that women had more depression, women had more anger, and women had more hostility early in the morning,” said sleep expert Michael Breus at the time.
Breus’ solution: Take naps of 25 or 90 minutes to rejuvenate the mind.
“The more of your brain you use during the day, the more of it that needs to recover and, consequently, the more sleep you need,” said another sleep expert. “Women tend to multi-task … and so they use more of their actual brain than men do."
A few years back, Arianna Huffington co-wrote a blog calling sleep "the next feminist issue” because overworked women are sleep-deprived. Indeed, the Duke research indicates that women’s lack of sleep is more likely to cause serious health problems including depression, stroke, and heart disease. According to Sleep Cycle, Japanese women sleep the least (5 hours, 56 minutes) while Fins, the Dutch, and New Zealanders get the most (7 hours, 41 minutes), and American women average just over 7 hours. (Orange glasses could help you get better sleep.)
By Neal Colgrass
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This article originally appeared on Newser: Women Sleep More, Wake Up Feeling Worse
