Byline: LUCY ELKINS
COMPETITIVE tiredness is a sport familiar to most couples. Men and women frequently disagree about who gets the most sleep, who finds it the least exhausting to tend to a crying child in the night and who has the Prada Replica Handbags most energy left for chores.
Indeed, Arianna Huffington, a leading U.S. commentator, has declared women's sleep 'the next feminist issue', arguing their lack of sleep affects their judgment, creativity and ability to realise their full potential.
But do women really need more sleep than men? Now, thanks to a leading sleep expert, that argument can finally be settled. He has concluded that women need 20 minutes more shut-eye than the average man. And that's down to a woman's busy, multi-tasking brain.
'One of the major functions of sleep is to allow the brain to recover and repair itself,' says Professor Jim Horne, director of the Sleep Research Centre at Loughborough University, in England, and author of Sleepfaring: A Journey Through The Science Of Sleep. 'During deep sleep, the cortex -- the part of the brain responsible for thought memory, language and so on -- disengages from the senses and goes into recovery mode.
'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.
'Women tend to multi-task -- they do lots at once and are flexible -- and so they use more of their actual brain than men do. Because of that, their sleep need is greater.
'A man who has a complex job that involves a lot of decision-making and lateral thinking may also need more sleep than the average male -- though probably still not as much as a woman.
Chanel Replica HandbagsTHIS IS because women's brains are wired differently from men's and are more complex, so their sleep need will be slightly greater.
The average is 20 minutes more, but some women may need slightly more or less than this.' Professor Horne believes the differing sleep needs may explain why a man's brain ages faster than a woman's. 'A typical 75-year-old woman has a comparable brain age to a 70-year-old man,' he says.
links of london'We are unsure why. The fact that a woman's brain tends to get more time to relax and repair itself may explain it.' How much sleep individual men and women need varies greatly.
'The average adult needs between six and eight hours of sleep a night,' says Professor Horne.
'But individual needs differ greatly -- some people can get by easily on six hours while others can't. 'What is important is that people have enough sleep to ensure they do not feel excessively sleepy in the day.' The problem is that women might need more sleep than men, but they aren't getting it.
A study carried out by scientists in North Carolina found that women suffer from a lack of sleep more than men.
This is partly because women's sleep tends to be lighter and more easily disturbed than men's, according to the American Academy Of Sleep Medicine. Some women suffer sleep disturbances as they go through pregnancy due to the weight and position of the baby.
Older women can sleep restlessly during the menopause, often as a result of Replica fendi wholesale hot flushes, but their sleep patterns normally return to normal once it is over. 'The most important, refreshing type of sleep
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