Do you lay awake at night while your husband or partner is asleep as soon as their head hits the pillow?
Well Canadian researchers may have come up with a reason why. According to their studies they have found that women's circadian clocks are two hours ahead of men's.
The circadian clock controls our sleep patterns, making us to feel tired at night and awake in the morning. The Canadian scientists followed a group of 25 men and women over 72 hours, recording how their circadian clocks worked.
Half of the women tested were more likely to struggle to get to sleep then men were. To get an idea of their natural sleep cycles they tested both men and women in a sleep laboratory over three days and nights. They kept the men and women awake alternately for an hour, then allowed them to have a nap.
They then tracked alertness levels and read their circadian rhythms by looking at body temperatures and levels of the hormone melatonin, an indication of how sleepy you are. Final results showed that women were found to have a circadian rhythm of between 1.7 and 2.3 hours ahead of the men.
The research, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that this was why some women suffer worse with insomnia and or have a restless sleep, especially if they try and follow the sleep patterns of a partner.
The lesson? You take that early night – alone.
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