Study of 476 Swedes Finds Women Sleep Better but Rate It Worse Than Men
Updated
Updated · news.ki.se · Jun 16
Study of 476 Swedes Finds Women Sleep Better but Rate It Worse Than Men
3 articles · Updated · news.ki.se · Jun 16
Summary
238 women and 238 men in Sweden showed a clear gap between perception and measurement: women reported poorer sleep quality, yet overnight polysomnography found fewer awakenings, longer sleep, higher efficiency and more deep sleep.
Short awakenings appear to drive the paradox. Men underestimated how often they woke, and when researchers excluded men with brief, barely noticeable awakenings, the self-reported gender gap disappeared.
Age widened the objective differences: older men had less deep sleep and more awakenings per hour, while women’s measured sleep deteriorated less even as they continued to rate it more poorly.
One-night home recordings limit how far the findings can be generalized to long-term sleep patterns, the Karolinska Institutet-led team said in Sleep Advances.