Extra sleep can help cut women's risk of diabetes - but unfortunately not for men

By Miriam Stoppard

Ever wanted to get a cup of tea in bed in the morning? Well, here’s your excuse: extra sleep may cut a woman’s risk of diabetes.
But the same isn’t true of men, who risk a higher chance of diabetes if they lie in. So don’t let him snooze on through the morning if you want to keep your man healthy.
A Dutch-led team of researchers has studied almost 800 healthy middle-aged men and women to learn more about the link between sleep and diabetes.
This could be important in ­overcoming the curse of the diabetes epidemic.
Volunteers were told to wear a device that tracked their sleep and underwent tests to show how well their body was able to use insulin, the hormone that controls blood sugar and prevents the ­development of diabetes.
With Type 2 diabetes the body doesn’t make enough insulin – or struggles to use the insulin that is made, so blood sugar levels soar.
The volunteers slept for an average of seven hours and 18 minutes. But when the women slept longer than this, their bodies became better at using insulin.
And the longer they slept, the more responsive they were to the hormone, eliminating their risk of diabetes.
Women win both ways because lack of sleep is also linked to their better use of insulin. It’s a completely different story for men, in fact, the very opposite.
Sleeping for more than an average time ­significantly cut their ability to use insulin, making them more susceptible to diabetes.

Researcher Dr Femke Rutters, of the VU Medical Centre in Amsterdam, said: “In a group of nearly 800 healthy people, we observed sex-specific relationships between sleep duration and glucose metabolism.
In men, sleeping too much or too little was related to less ­responsiveness of the cells in the body to insulin, reducing glucose uptake and thus increasing the risk of developing diabetes in the future.
“In women, however, no such ­association was observed.”
The research shows yet again how important sleep is as a key aspect of health. We know men get less deep, restorative sleep than women, and so their health is more likely to suffer from sleep deprivation.
It’s less clear why extra sleep is bad for men but good for women. However, it’s possible that men who regularly ­oversleep are already ill in some way.
Previous research has shown that while women spend longer in bed than men they usually get less sleep. Not so in this new research.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/lifestyle/health/extra-sleep-can-help-cut-8945267