Gen X Women Get Less Sleep Than Any Other Generation. What ’s Keeping Them Up?

In the middle of the night, I wake up feeling warm. I open the window and pull my hair back into a ponytail and drink some water. Then I glance at my phone, delete a few things, and see some spam. I hit unsubscribe and go back to bed. Then I lie there thinking, What if by opening that spam email I got myself hacked? What if I just sent everyone in my contact list a Burger King ad at two in the morning? Now wide awake, I move on to other concerns: my parents’ health, my stepson’s college tuition, pending deadlines. Hours roll by. I tackle real-life math problems: how many weeks I have before getting my next freelance check, how many years until my husband and I pay off our mortgage, how much will be in my retirement account in 2040, how many hours of sleep I will get on this night. Six… five and a half… Then it’s six a.m., time to make breakfast and send my 13-year-old son off to school. Members of Generation X like me—those born between 1965 and 1980—report sleeping fewer hours per night than their Silent Generation grandparents, Boomers, Millennials and Generation Z. Sleeplessness is particularly common among Gen X women, a third of whom get less than seven hours a night on average. Even compared to Gen X men, we do worse when it comes to both falling asleep and staying asleep. A 2017 national report found that perimenopausal women were least likely to sleep more than seven hours a night, followed by postmenopausal women. Elinor ...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Gen X healthy sleep insomnia Source Type: news