Sleep for Better Health

Scientists at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina discovered that women need more sleep than men. They say that women suffer more than men, both mentally and physically, if they are forced to hold back on on their sleep.

 As well as a higher risk of heart disease, depression and psychological problems, sleep-deprived women have extra clotting factors in their blood, which can lead to a stroke. They also have higher inflammation markers, which indicate developing health problems. As inflammation markers are also linked to pain, sleep expert Dr Michael Breus explained that women can literally be in more pain when they wake up. Which is why they feel more grumpy.

By contrast, the state of a man's health does not appear to be closely linked to how much they sleep. In the study, men showed no increased risk of developing the ailments that affect women when they are sleep deprived."We found that women had more depression, women had more anger, and women had more hostility early in the morning," said Dr Breus. If this sounds like someone you know, it can probably be blamed on sleep deprivation and the fact that women are particularly susceptible to the effects. So what does Dr Breus advise?

If you don’t manage to get enough sleep at night, try taking strategic naps.

However, he warned that those naps should be either 25 minutes or 90 minutes long. Any other length will make the sleeper feel worse when they wake, he said.

"One of the major functions of sleep is to allow the brain to recover and repair itself," said Professor Jim Horne, director of the Sleep Research Centre at Loughborough University, England. "During deep sleep, the cortex - the part of the brain responsible for thought, memory, language and so on - disengages from the senses and goes into recovery mode. "The more of your brain you use during the day, the more of it that needs to recover and, consequently, the more sleep you need. "Women tend to multi-task - they do lots at once and are flexible - and so they use more of their actual brain than men do. Because of that, their sleep need is greater.

This is not the first time experts have suggested that women need more sleep than men. So try and get that proper sleep or make up for it in short naps , Happy snoozing!