Gender differences in real-home sleep of young and older couples
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nihms693098.pdf
Description
Accepted version
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715.23 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
3a9edb488c51682690e6d60cf33b047f
Author(s)
Butt, Maryam
Quan, Stuart
Pentland, Alex Sandy L
Khaya, Inas
Date Issued
2015
Journal
Southwest Journal of Pulmonary and Critical Care
Publisher
Southwest Journal of Pulmonary and Critical Care
Citation
Butt, M., et al. "Gender Differences in Real-Home Sleep of Young and Older Couples." Southwest J Pulm Crit Care 10 5 (2015): 289-99.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
STUDY 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.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Media Laboratory
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Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.13175/SWJPCC068-15
