Do Men or Women Need More Sleep? | Dr. Allison Brager & Dr. Andy Galpin

Chromosomal Mechanisms Influencing Sleep Differences Between Men and Women00:00

Andy Galpin: What do we actually know about sleep differences between men and women? What I actually want to know about is chromosomally. When you tease out the hormones, whether it's a polymorphism or some other activity at the level of the genome, how is that actually manipulating, manifesting itself into sleep? Any idea what mechanisms would possibly be there if it's not endocrine?

Allison Brager: In terms of mechanism of action, we know there's differences in sleep pressure. If you unpack the onion, sleep pressure is manifest from increasing levels of extracellular adenosine production within the brain, particularly the basal forebrain, which is a wake-promoting area. If sleep pressure is accumulating quickly, which seems to be the case in biological males by way of the testes-determining gene, then there's more rapid accumulation of extracellular adenosine, and the only way to pay off that increasing sleep pressure is through daytime sleep. With females, it just essentially means the rate of accumulation of sleep pressure is lower, which means that the production of extracellular adenosine would be lower. Now, whether that's been studied, it hasn't, but hypothetically, just knowing with all the myriad of studies around accumulating sleep pressure and extracellular adenosine, we predict that's the mechanism of action.

Andy: That's the closest we can come at this point, right?