Women sleep more than men, but don't fall asleep or stay asleep as easily, a new report says.
The Statistics Canada report, finds that men sleep an average of eight hours and seven minutes a night, about 11 minutes less than women. But 35 per cent of women have trouble falling asleep, compared to 25 per cent of men.
As well, among men and women with full-time employment, men sleep 14 minutes less than women. There was no gender sleep difference among part-time workers or the unemployed.
The study was based on data from the 2005 General Society Survey on time use, which queried more than 19,500 people aged 15 and over about how much time they spend on various activities in a day.
Julie Carrier, a psychology professor at the Universite de Montreal and a sleep researcher at Sacre-Coeur Hospital, said that few studies have been done to analyze the factors that affect a woman's sleep patterns.
Hormonal changes, depression and anxiety, as well as whether or not women simply need more sleep than men, are just some theories that researchers need to explore, Carrier said.
However, according to the report's author, Matt Hurst, the survey did show women who exercise have a better quality of sleep than those who do not.
"Women who exercise sleep 19 minutes less than those who don't," Hurst said.
"Now that's a little counterintuitive because exercise helps you relax, it's a reliever of stress. But, there's a lower incidence of women who exercise saying they have problems falling asleep or staying asleep. So the quality of their sleep is better."
Overall, the report's findings show that, in addition to gender, factors such as income and the commute to work, as well as job and marital status, all have an impact on how much sleep Canadians get.
Some findings include:
- A person who makes $60,000 a year or more sleeps 40 minutes less than someone who makes $20,000.
- People who work full time get 24 minutes less sleep than those with no regular employment.
- Respondents who work more than nine hours a day sleep for 41 fewer minutes than those who work for less than four hours.
- Those with a daily commute of one to 30 minutes get an extra 22 minutes of sleep compared to those who commute for an hour or more per day.
- Among those who feel crunched for time, men get 35 minutes less sleep, while women sleep for 25 minutes less.
- Single people sleep 24 minutes longer than those who are married or live common-law.
- Adults who have one child sleep 17 minutes less than those without kids, while parents with at least two children sleep 25 minutes less.
Carrier said that people are looking for any extra time they can find in their schedules because they are filling their days with work, children and active social lives. Therefore, they feel that the only place they can find the needed time is to cut into their sleep.
However, a lack of sleep affects many aspects of overall health.
"The more research we are doing on sleep the more we realize that sleeping is not just important to have a good mood or to be vigilant or to not feel sleepy," said Carrier.
"It's also very important for plenty of other body functions, for example, for your immune system, for your cardiovascular system."
Carrier added that the fact that those in a higher income bracket are sleeping less opposes findings of previous studies on income's relationship to diet and exercise.
"It's interesting because for many other health habits, for example eating habits or exercising, usually you see that with an increase of money that you make, people will tend to smoke less, to eat better, etc. And it's totally the opposite with this data," Carrier said.
"So it means that education is not doing a good job; sleep researchers are not speaking loud enough yet because people do not believe that sleep is important."
