Gender Differences in Real-Home Sleep of Young and Older Couples
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Gender Differences in Real-Home Sleep of Young and Older Couples.pdf
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Author(s)
Butt, Maryam
Quan, Stuart F.
Pentland, Alex
Khayal, Inas
Date Issued
May 19, 2015
Publisher
Southwest Journal of Pulmonary and Critical Care
Citation
Butt, M., Quan, S. F., Pentland, A. S., & Khayal, I. (2015). Gender differences in real-home sleep of young and older couples. Southwest journal of pulmonary & critical care, 10(5), 289.
Abstract
Objectives: To understand gender differences in sleep quality, architecture and duration of young healthy couples in comparison to older couples in their natural sleep environment.
Design: Sleep was monitored in a naturalistic setting using a headband sleep monitoring device over a period of two weeks for young couples and home polysomnography for the older couples.
Participants: Ten heterosexual young couples (male mean age: 28.2 1.0[SD] years /female mean age: 26.8 0.9 years) and 14 older couples (male mean age: 59.3+ 9.6 years/female mean age: 58.8+ 9.1 years).
Measurements and results: In the young couples, total sleep time (395+66 vs. 367+54 min., p<0.05), sleep efficiency (97.0+3.0 vs. 91.1+7.9, p<0.001), and % REM (31.1+4.8 vs. 23.6+5.5, p<0.001) in males was higher than in females. In contrast, % light sleep (51.7+7.1 vs. 59.7+6.7, p<0.001) and number of arousals (2.9+1.9 vs. 5.3+1.9, p<0.001) were lower. These differences persisted after controlling for evening mood and various evening pre-sleep activities. In the older couples, there were no differences between genders. In addition, children in the household adversely impacted sleep.
Conclusions: In couples recorded in the home, young males slept longer and had better sleep quality than young females. This difference appears to dissipate with age. In-home assessment of couples can aid in understanding of gender differences in sleep and how they are affected by age and social environment.
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MIT Connection Science (Research institute)
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