Why a lie-in’s good for a woman, but not a man

IT IS the perfect excuse for women to enjoy a lie in – while the men in their lives make them breakfast in bed.

Research shows that extra sleep may cut females’ risk of developing diabetes.

However, the opposite is true for males – with men who stayed snuggled under the duvet thought to be at higher odds of developing the condition.

The discovery is important because diabetes rates are soaring as waistlines expand.

The condition eats up a tenth of the NHS budget and leads to disabling and life-threatening complications from stroke and heart attacks, to blindness, kidney disease and circulatory problems that lead to limbs being amputated.

Learning more about what fuels diabetes could have huge health and economic benefits.

A Dutch-led team of researchers studied almost 800 healthy middle-aged men and women.

The volunteers wore a device that tracked their sleep and underwent tests to show how well their body was able to use insulin, the sugar-processing hormone at the root of diabetes.

In type 2 diabetes, the form suffered by most of Britain’s four million diabetics, the body does not make enough insulin – or struggles to use the insulin that is made. The volunteers slept for an average of seven hours and 18 minutes. When the women slept longer than this, their bodies were better at using insulin.

And the longer they slept, the more responsive they were to the hormone, suggesting their risk of diabetes was reduced.

Interestingly, lack of sleep has also been linked to better use of insulin in women. However, the results were very different for the men studied.

There, sleeping more than average reduced their ability to use insulin, meaning they may be at greater risk of diabetes.

Cutting short sleep was also detrimental to males, the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism reports.

Researcher Dr Femke Rutters, of the VU Medical Centre in Amsterdam, said: ‘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, no such association was observed. This research shows how important sleep is to a key aspect of health.’

Previous studies have shown that while women spend longer in bed than men, they get less sleep.

The Cambridge University scientists said that the problems of juggling work and family life may leave females tossing and turning.

‘Reduces the risk of diabetes’