Women Are From Venus...

Posted by Janet Muniz, Thursday, July 03, 2008 at 09:00 AM by Janet Muniz

I'm reading one of my favorite magazines the other day, Spirituality & Health, and come across an article about a new Duke University study that surmises sleepless women actually suffer more than sleepless men.

The study finds that generally women are twice as likely as men to report sleep problems and that women are more like to associate poor sleep with "high levels of psychological distress and greater feelings of hostility, depression and anger," says lead study author Edward Suarez, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Duke.

This brings to mind concepts in the book, Why Gender Matters by Leonard Sax, M.D., Ph.D., my book club's most recent book selection. This volume speaks to what parents and teachers need to know about the "emerging science of sex differences." Understanding that there are indeed differences between the sexes can help in figuring out what's actually going on in children's lives.

Fascinating.

And one of the concepts that Dr. Sax researches and explores is that girls actually feel pain differently than boys.

Duke's sleep study goes on to determine that falling asleep quickly is the key to good sleep and women in the study who didn't fall asleep in the first half hour were the most at risk for health problems.

Wow. Do you know how long it takes you to fall asleep?

What is interesting to me are the reasons that Duke's study points to for women's reactions to poor sleep. They continue to research how hormones and neurotransmitters such as serotonin affects mood, sleep, inflammation and insulin resistance differently in women and men.

Recently I've been suffering through back and hip pain, especially at night. I may fall asleep during the first half hour of rest, but that ringing nerve twinge of lower back trouble is enough to wake me up – and keep me up. After several weeks of this, I'm functioning like a basket case during the day.

Get thee to the chiropractor!

Janet Muniz

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