Dr. Mitch: Why do women sleep less than men?

Dr. Mitch. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Cold and rainy day, but I hope it turns out better for everybody. Well, me too. Yeah. Yeah. So tell me something. Women sleep less than men. Why? And differently. And differently. That's really important. And I don't think it's something that's been appreciated. That's why this study in scientific reports is so important on so many different levels. One, women have a different pattern of sleep.

sleep less deeply and are more responsive to their environment than men by and large remember whenever you're making generalizations like this they're always going to be exceptions but by and large and it's probably related to levels of estrogen and projection in their system when those levels of the lowest are when they're sleeping patterns of their most off this has been studied this has been shown in a study in scientific reports looking at mice the important message for for for women is uh... don't stress out

If you're sleeping is different than your partners than the males. Don't stress out if you're a little bit more responsive. If you get up more often, if you wander around the house in the middle of the night from time to time, be more concerned about the quality of your sleep and whether it's restorative sleep and if it's enough for you. So a male might need, we'll say, seven or eight or nine hours of sleep and be totally out.

to wake up in the morning feeling refreshed and at their best. But a woman might not. And so don't stress out about the number of hours, stress out about the quality of the amount of sleep that you get. If you wake up in the morning, feeling refreshed, that's important. And that's what you want to aim for. That's number one. But number two, it means that a lot of the research we've been doing, if they haven't taken into account the sex of the person or that their drug is being targeted for, being used on,

They may be missing vitally important information. So it was only in 2016 that the authorities in the states required that, and especially in animal studies, if they were looking at sleeping pills, for example, that they included equal number of male and female, we'll say mice. And the study that in the site of the reports showed that if you didn't do that, and you had predominantly, we'll say, male mice in your study looking at a sleeping medication,

You might get a result that was only true for men or males or male mice and not true for women. So you're going to see it. Unfortunately, it takes a while for stuff like this to get into the pipeline in terms of scientific research. But you may find that there are certain sleeping pills, for example, that were supposedly effective in both males and females may actually not be as effective as we thought they were in females. So there's a lot to this. Expect to hear a lot about it as time evolves.

expect to hear that certain medications that we thought were equally good in men and women may not be. And I think the other key message is not to be too hard on yourself, not to set yourself a specific number for the number of hours that you sleep, but that the quality of sleep is good and that it's restorative sleep that you wake up in the morning feeling refreshed and able to greet your day, that should be your criteria for the amount of sleep you need.

Wake up in the morning feeling refreshed. What? What? What that mean? Honestly. People like you and me, we do not count with with our schedule, but I mean normal people who have a normal life and get up at a reasonable time and go to bed at a reasonable time.

I think that applies. You know what I would like to do just once again? Yeah. Is have that kind of sleep? I did when I was a kid where you basically close your eyes and you open them. It seems like a second later and it's morning, 10 hours later. And you feel great because you slept so well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You sleep does become more fragmented and more disrupted as we get older. There are things that happen to our circadian rhythm, the natural body rhythm.

that do change as we get older unfortunately uh... but it's something to aim for and i think i think it's admirable the training for that you have a great day have a good week at a great week at that's dr mit schulman