Women Need More Sleep Than Men: 5 Sleep Facts That Could Transform Your Health

Health transformations don’t always require dramatic interventions. Sometimes, understanding a few key facts — really understanding them — is enough to create meaningful, lasting change. A physician recently shared five such facts about sleep, and they have the potential to genuinely improve how you rest, recover, and perform. Leading the list is a finding that surprises many: women need more sleep than men.
The reason is biological and rooted in brain function. Women tend to multitask more extensively throughout the day — managing multiple responsibilities, thought streams, and emotional considerations simultaneously. This kind of cognitive intensity demands more of the brain’s organizational and processing systems. During sleep, those systems work to consolidate the day’s experiences and restore cognitive resources. More work during the day means more restoration needed at night — approximately 20 more minutes’ worth.
The physician also highlights the importance of sleep onset time. Falling asleep should take 10 to 20 minutes. If it happens faster, the body may be signaling that it’s exhausted well beyond a healthy level. If it consistently takes longer, the body may be struggling to shift out of an alert, active state — a pattern that can indicate insomnia, excessive stress, or a disrupted sleep environment worth evaluating.
About 95 percent of dreams are forgotten immediately after waking — a fact that holds up consistently across research. Dream content is generated during sleep phases that don’t support long-term memory encoding, meaning those vivid narratives and emotional scenarios fade almost instantly. The physician’s practical advice: write down whatever you remember immediately upon waking, even fragmentary images or feelings, before engaging with the day.
To complete the picture: seventeen hours of continuous wakefulness delivers cognitive impairment comparable to a 0.05 blood alcohol concentration, which is enough to meaningfully affect performance and safety. And melatonin works best in small doses — specifically around 0.5 mg — because this amount aligns with what the body naturally produces, supporting the sleep-wake cycle without overwhelming or disrupting it.