Why Men Sleep Better Than Women
By Jennifer Goldberg
Do you wake up groggy while your male partner is full of energy? It's not your imagination - men really do tend to sleep better than women.
If you sleep beside a male partner, chances are good that you've marveled at his ability to konk out as soon as his head hits the pillow while you lie awake watching the minutes blink by on your clock radio. You're not alone in this particular battle of the sexes - a recent Stats Can study of Canadians' sleep habits showed that 35 percent of women polled reported difficulty falling and staying asleep, compared to only 25 percent of men. Interestingly, the study also showed that women tend to sleep about an average of 11 minutes longer each night than their male counterparts do.
Though these results may seem just as mind-boggling as your man's ability to drift off during horror flicks, Helen Driver, a Kingston, Ont.-based sleep researcher and president of the Canadian Sleep Society, says the reason for these findings is twofold. "Women may need a little more sleep than men do," she explains, "and we also experience more sleep problems, such as insomnia."
The role of hormones
So what's the problem? One explanation could be hormonal changes throughout our reproductive cycles. "Women are more prone to having poor sleep around menstruation, and that's related to pain and mood changes," Driver says.
Pregnancy is another known time for sleep disturbance. An increase in the hormone progesterone will have you waking up for endless trips to the washroom in your first trimester and the size of your belly will cause you some discomfort when trying to sleep in your third trimester.
Then in perimenopause, the time right before menopause when women cease to menstruate, a drop in progesterone and estrogen hormone levels may cause symptoms such as nighttime hot flashes and insomnia.
We can't shut our brains off
If all these hormonal changes aren't enough to make you jealous of your easy-resting man, Driver says emotional sensitivity might be another reason why some women have trouble sleeping.
"Some [experts] suggest that women are more in tune with how they're feeling and are more sensitive to problems with their sleep," she explains. "A theory we have is that women tend to ruminate about things a little bit more than men do. Women worry and think about what's happened during the day, and they're not able to let things go." 
