How Sleep is Different When You’re a Woman.

The answer is super scientific & heads up it’s due to our reproductive system

To make it easier to understand, women sleep different because there are differences between the male sleep cycle and the female sleep cycle. This difference occurs the moment a young woman experiences puberty.

When men and women sleep, we go through 4 sleep stages, they last from 70 to 120 minutes and are made up of distinct sleep stages. Three of the stages are non-REM (non-rapid eye movement) and one stage is REM (rapid eye movement)

The first three stages are non rapid eye movement, and the final stage is rapid eye movement. The first two non- REM stages are lighter sleep and stage 3 non-REM is deep sleep. Deep sleep slows down our breathing, brain and muscle activity. Finally, REM sleep in stage 4, this is the stage where we will most likely remember our dreams and have the most brain activity.

How a person moves through sleep cycles is known as sleep architecture. Women and men have variations in sleep architecture. Women spend more time in deep sleep (stage 3) and spend less time in light sleep (stage 1).

Hormones and mensuration are a huge reason why this happens. The author of “The Complete Guide to a Good Night’s Sleep” and “The Sleep Diet,” Dr. Carmel Harrington, told Vogue Australia: “As we get closer to the end of our cycle, a lot of us suffer from PMT (premenstrual tension), feeling irritable, grumpy or emotional. One of the things that we often don’t address is that fertile women require more sleep in the second half of their cycle,” Harrington explained. So periods affect women’s sleep before, during and even after their period cycle is over.

As soon as a young woman enters puberty, her hormones undergo major changes. Specifically changes in her estrogen and progesterone levels. When these changes occur, even the slightest drop in the levels of these hormones before the start of a woman’s period can cause physical and emotional effects. This disrupts a women’s sleep cycle causing a shift to her sleep cycle.

It’s not only during mensuration when a woman can undergrow changes to her sleep habits. Women who are pregnant and women who are menopausal will also go through changes in hormone production.

When it comes to menopause effecting a woman’s sleep cycle, a few changes occur. The changes occur a few years before menopause begins during a transitional period known as “perimenopause”. Also according to Sleep Foundation, bothersome hot flashes and night sweats, which affects as many as 85% of women.

We all know sleep is important and not everyone needs the same amount of sleep. It’s crucial to not only track our health but more specifically our reproductive health system to determine how much sleep we need to optimize tomorrow.

Hey, I’m Maryam an ambitious student passionate about all things entrepreneurship and cool current things going on in the world right now.

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