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Dr Berman on...The Body
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In regular columns that are frank, smart, and sometimes surprising, Dr. Laura Berman tackles issues around women's health.
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Sleep: Are You Getting Enough?
Sleep is the sex of our modern times — and one survey makes it official.
A recent poll by the National Sleep Foundation found that we Americans are practically sleepwalking through our lives. And too little snoozing takes the oomph right out of that other activity we do in our beds: sex.
The survey found that the average American is falling short of the seven-to-nine-hour nightly sleep recommendation. Aside from compromising performance at work and adding hazardous drivers to the morning commute, skimpy sleep makes intimacy more like drudgery — at least for the half of Americans who consider themselves poor sleepers.
So why is sleep sexy? Among the good sleepers, just 8 percent said that their intimacy was affected by feeling tired. Among the sleep-impaired, more than 33 percent reported that fatigue was invading their sex lives and leaving less satisfaction in its wake.
It may be our go-go-go society that has made a good night’s rest seem like a luxury. But sleep is not a luxury; it is an essential, if not entirely understood, component of our physical and mental health. Scientists know that it does something good for the brain, which then affects every other part of our being — mood, immune function, memory, metabolism, and virtually every other process imaginable. It makes sense that sex would also go when these other functions are on the decline. When we women don’t feel good — in any way — we don’t want to have sex. There has even been research that REM sleep is important for maintaining good genital blood flow and that women sometimes get clitoral erections (known as engorgement) during REM sleep!
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