Women stably married sleep better

SEATTLE, June 11 (UPI) -- Women who are stably married or gain a partner have better sleep than unmarried women or those who lost a partner, U.S. researchers found.

Lead author Wendy Troxel of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine found women who were stably married had the highest quality sleep even after controlling for other factors known to affect 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 married women," Troxel said in a statement. "We speculate that these findings may reflect a 'newlywed effect' or simply the fact that these women may be less adjusted to sleeping with their partner than the 'stably married' women."

The study used data from 360 middle-age African-American, Caucasian, and Chinese women drawn from a study of women's health with a mean age of 51 years.

Subjects also wore wrist activity monitors, which provide a behavioral measure of sleep-wake patterns, for approximately one month.

The findings were presented at Sleep, the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies