A new study has revealed that marital happiness may lower the risk of sleep problems in Caucasian women, whereas marital worry may raise the chances of the same.

The result was based on the study in which Dr. Wendy M. Troxel, a psychologist at the University of Pittsburgh, and his co-workers focused on 1,938 married women with an average age of 46 years.

The study participants included 51% Caucasian, 20% African-American, 9% Hispanic, 11% Japanese and 9% Chinese.

All the participants reported their marital happiness, their marriage state, sleep quality and regularity of difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep or early morning awakenings.

The study researchers discovered that happily married women had lesser risk of having multiple sleep complaints, but only among Caucasian women.

They said that happily married women experienced less difficulty getting to sleep, had fewer sleep problems, had more relaxing sleep and were less likely to wake up early or awaken in the middle of the night than unhappily married women.

Dr. Troxel said, “Divorced individuals tend to have more sleep problems than those who are married; however, among the married, we know very little about how differences in marital quality may be linked with sleep. The present results show that happily married women have fewer sleep problems than unhappily married women.”

Sleep plays an important role in encouraging a woman’s health as well as well-being. Getting the required amount of sleep is likely to increase a woman’s overall quality of life, including the quality of her relationship.

It is suggested that women get between seven and eight hours of nightly sleep.

The study has been presented at ‘SLEEP 2008’, the 22nd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies (APSS).