Being stably married or gaining a partner is associated with better sleep in women than being unmarried or losing a partner, according to a research that will be presented on Wednesday, June 10, at SLEEP 2009, the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies.
Results show that women who were stably married or who had gained a partner during the eight years of the study had better sleep than women who were unmarried or who had lost a partner over the course of the study follow-up.
According to the study’s lead author, Wendy Troxel, PhD, Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, women who were stably married had the highest quality sleep measured objectively and subjectively, and these results persisted even after controlling for other known risk factors for sleep, including age, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and depressive symptoms.
“Women who had ‘gained’ a partner over the eight years of the study had similar subjective sleep quality as compared to the stably married women; however, after looking at specific objective sleep measurements we discovered that these women had more restless sleep than the always…