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Fitbit Sleep Study Reveals Women May Snag More Sleep Than Men

Jenna Adrian-Diaz

January 4, 2018

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Photo: Fitbit

If you regularly use an activity tracker, you might spend less time poring over the sleep data than juicier metrics, like your step count. Because even though you very well may have woken up five times last night, you can't even remember it happening—but you certainly remember that long walk home from work! Now, the shut-eye stats are being put to great use: Wearable activity tracker brand Fitbit has been collecting it (anonymously), and finally there's a big and hefty data set to study how humans sleep.

The new study analyzed 6 billion nights of users' sleep and found an interesting difference between men and women, Yahoo Finance reported: Women average 25 more minutes of nightly shut-eye and 10 more minutes of deep REM sleep than their male counterparts. Talk about a #win.

While women may get more—and better—sleep comparatively, neither gender gets *enough.*

Well, sort of. While women may get more—and better—sleep comparatively, neither gender gets *enough.* The study showed that men, on average, snoozed for just 6 hours and 25 minutes per night, with women's extra 25 minutes bringing their average up to 6 hours and 50 minutes. Still, neither gender is close to the recommended eight hours.

The study also showed that women are 40 percent more likely to suffer from insomnia than men. According to the company's lead sleep research scientist Conor Heneghan, the reasons for these key differences aren't well understood. "It’s really not known if it’s a physiology thing, is it a cultural thing, who knows,” he told Yahoo Finance. “I think it would be super exciting over the next 10, 20 years for people to really get into why."

The key takeaways from Fitbit's study? Everyone could use more sleep—and luckily, there are some helpful hacks for catching those super-necessary zzz's.

High-tech sleep science will be major this year; this study is just the beginning. And here's how to tweak your bedroom to get more (and better!) sleep.