Gender differences in real-home sleep of young and older couples

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.