BALTIMORE, June 10 (UPI) -- Marital happiness may lower the risk of sleep problems in Caucasian women while, conversely, marital strife may heighten the risk, U.S. researchers said.
Wendy M. Troxel of the University of Pittsburgh studied 1,938 married women from the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation, a multi-site study of mid-life women whose average age was 46.
Out of the study participants, 51 percent were Caucasian, 20 percent African-American, 9 percent Hispanic, 9 percent Chinese and 11 percent Japanese. The subjects reported on their marital happiness, sleep quality and frequency of difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep or early morning awakenings.
Higher levels of marital happiness were associated with a lesser risk of having multiple sleep complaints, but only among Caucasian women.
However, happily married women had less difficulty falling asleep and staying asleep, and reported fewer early morning awakenings and more restful sleep as compared to unhappily married women.
"The present results show that happily married women have fewer sleep problems than unhappily married women," Troxel said in a statement.
The findings were presented at the 22nd annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies in Baltimore.
