Harder for women to sleep

You're sleep-deprived and struggling through the day on caffeine and nerves. Sex? Forget it. Friendships? No time. You forgo sleep, exercise and instead of winding down at night, you're doing the chores and worrying about tomorrow.

At each stage of life - from youth to old age, through pregnancy, baby care, and menopause - women find that getting a good night's sleep is hard. And it becomes harder, not easier, as they age.

"Sure, guys are exhausted, but they're not blindsided by their biology," says Meir Kryger, chairman of the task force that designed a recent poll for the US National Sleep Foundation.

"They don't have babies. They don't have menopause."

The main message, says Kryger: Women don't give sleep a high enough priority.

To cope, they down another cup of coffee. Two-thirds of women use caffeine to stay awake, and more than a third drink three or more cups of coffee (or their equivalent) a day, the poll found.

"As soon as I get in in the morning, I take a double shot of espresso," says Ona Lee, 28, who works at a New York hedge fund. She rarely goes to bed before 11 pm, and gets up at 5.30 am.

"It never feels like enough," she says.

People don't understand that "sleep is a biological need," says Dr Jeffrey Barasch, director of The Valley Hospital Sleep Centre in Ridgewood, New Jersey. "They think it's a waste of time."

But without it, he says, "everything deteriorates: your health, your performance, your family life."

Exhaustion reduces the body's ability to fight disease. It diminishes mental sharpness, leading to poor judgment and delayed reaction time - critical factors while driving a car, say, or caring for small children.

Some suffer from sleep apnoea, or the temporary cessation of breathing while asleep. Oxygen deprivation causes a person to wake up with a start, heart pounding.

That leads to a faster heart rate and higher blood pressure. If breathing stops too long, it can cause a heart attack. Continued...