It’s natural for a woman’s sex drive to ebb and flow over her life. Research has shown that not being in the mood for love can have different causes – everything from an unhappy relationship to depression, stress, and the side-effects of some medications.
More sleep...
But in their quest to understand the reasons for low sexual desire in women, researchers have overlooked the obvious: a good night’s sleep.
Not getting enough sleep is a pretty common concern these days, and it can have all sorts of consequences, from difficulty concentrating and learning, to more serious health problems over the long run. That’s why a group of US researchers figured it was time to take a closer look at how sleep affects a woman’s sex life.
The researchers found 170 young, healthy women willing to reveal all. The women filled in daily diaries on sexual desire, arousal, orgasms, and whether they’d had sex or masturbated the night before. They also noted if they’d slept well, how many hours of shut-eye they’d had, and how long it took them to fall asleep.
...more sex
Getting a good night’s sleep has a direct effect on a woman’s sex life, the study showed. Women who get enough sleep are more likely to be in the mood for sex. They also have more sex with their partners. Every extra hour of sleep a woman has ups the chance she’ll be getting it on with her partner by almost 15 per cent, the research revealed.
Women who get enough sleep on average also have fewer problems getting aroused than those who could use more hours between the covers each night.
The women who participated in the study were all US university students, and they got an average of just under seven and a half hours of sleep each night. During the two weeks of the study, those who were in a relationship had sex with their partner one out of every four days.
If you find you’re not in the mood for sex as much as you’d like to be, getting enough sleep could be a simple solution to boost your sex drive. "I think the take-home message should not be that more sleep is better, but that it is important to allow ourselves to obtain the sleep that our mind and body needs," says researcher Dr. David Kalmbach.
Source: The Impact of Sleep on Female Sexual Response and Behavior: A Pilot Study, David A. Kalmbach PhD, J. Todd Arnedt PhD, Vivek Pillai PhD, and Jeffrey A. Ciesla PhD
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