Good Sex Tied to Good Sleep | Everyday Health

Sleep and sex are two crucial ingredients for a woman’s quality of life.

A satisfyingsex lifeboosts many aspects of physical and emotional health, enhancing everything from mood to heart health.

And a good night’sbob ios下载 ? Research has shown it also impacts many things, from concentration and patience to staving off physical ailments including type 2 diabetes, immune dysfunction, and depression. Women approaching menopause who don’t sleep well are even more likely to gain excess weight,research has shown.

A new study shines a light on how sex and sleep are connected — beyond the simple fact that each often involves a bed.

Midlife women who report insufficient sleep quality also tend to have higher rates of sexual dysfunction, the study found.

Both Sleep and Sexual Issues Are Common in Midlife

It’s important to understand any entanglement between sleep and sexual issues, since both are so common in midlife women, says a coauthor of the study,Stephanie Faubion, MD, the chair of the department of medicine at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, and the medical director of theNorth American Menopause Society (NAMS).

Prior research has found that more than 26 percent of midlife women have significant sleep issues, with more than half experiencing at least some sleep problems during the menopause transition, the study authors note.

Meanwhile, some 43 percent of midlife women have a sexual dysfunction, which can be reduced desire, orgasm issues, dissatisfaction, pain, or other problems.

Researchers Used Validated Questionnaires to Get to the Root Causes

Several prior studies sought to link sleep quality to sex, but they did not consistently use validated questionnaires, Dr. Faubion says.

For the newstudy, published online April 21 in the journalMenopause, women were asked to fill out several questionnaires that had been previously validated, meaning the questions they asked were proper ones to identify these issues.

This included a questionnaire about sleep known as the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, which asks not only about the hours a woman sleeps but whether she has problems falling asleep and if her slumber is affected by anything, including a physical condition, the temperature of the room, the need to frequently pee, or other factors.

Sexual function was identified using two questionnaires, the Female Sexual Function Index and the revised Female Sexual Distress Scale. Both are crucial to truly understand sexual dysfunction, Faubion says, although she says that many researchers rely only on the first index.

“You can’t call something a problem unless the woman does,” she says. “It’s important not only to say that there is low desire, for instance, but for the woman herself to identify that it’s bothering her,” she says.

Other questionnaires looked at the women’s anxiety, mood, and relationship satisfaction.

The study included more than 3,400 midlife women who came to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and Arizona from 2016 to 2019. These women were mostly white, educated, and in a relationship, so it’s not known whether the results would be the same for the broader population of women.

Results Point to Sleep Quality as the Problem

Some 75 percent of the women in the study reported poor sleep quality, while 54 percent met the criteria for sexual dysfunction. These are huge percentages, Faubion says, saying the prevalence of these concerns underscores the need for doctors to better address them.

When results were analyzed to take other factors into account, women with poor sleep quality were found to be 1.48 times more likely to report having sexual issues.

On the flip side, sexually active women were more likely to be getting good quality sleep.

One notable discovery: The amount of total sleep (known as sleep duration) turned out to be less important than the quality of sleep.

Going Through Full Cycles in Sleep Is Key to Quality Rest

This may be because during the night, a person passes through a series ofbob ios下载 , a cycle that is repeated several times each night. Repeated interruptions of these cycles short-circuit this process.

Researchers, such as the authors of a study published in theJournal of Neurosciencein October 2015, have begun to document the effects of disrupted sleep separately from the total amount of sleep a person gets, and have found it impacts everything from physical and emotional health to how your brain functions during the day.

In theMenopausestudy, the researchers were not able to determine why reported sleep quality had a bigger impact than duration, but it could be related to the interruption of these cycles.

The researchers also could not determine whether poor quality sleep led to poorer sex, or whether it was a lack ofgood sexthat affected a woman’s ability to sleep. “Logically it makes sense that sleep quality issues impact sex, because when you’re tired you don’t have much libido. But it could also indicate an issue with her relationship that is affecting her ability to sleep,” Faubion says.

Don’t Let Either Problem (Sleep or Sex) Go Unresolved

很明显从这项研究中,医生应asking women about anything that might be impacting either their sleep or their sex lives, experts say.

“When encountering patients with sexual dysfunction, practitioners should consider the possibility of a sleep disorder, which can cause disrupted sleep,” saysMeir Kryger, MD, a Yale Medicine sleep specialist and a professor of pulmonary medicine at the Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut.

Dr. Kryger was not involved in the study.

Treatments for Sleep Trouble Are Available

Some of the issues affecting sleep that doctors can help with includesleep apnea, restless leg syndrome,panic attacks, or menopausal symptoms like night sweats, Faubion says.

But many general practitioners don’t ask midlife women about either their sleep or their sex life, Faubion laments. If your doctor doesn’t, it’s important that you bring it up yourself.

“A woman with sexual functioning issues should absolutely look at her sleep. Many things can impact sexual functioning, but this study identified that sleep may be one of them,” she says.