Ever wanted a medical excuse to NOT have to get out of bed in the morning? Here you go:
According to a study at Duke University in the US, women need more sleep than men. The researchers here have discovered that inadequate rest lead to more mental and physical consequences for women than it does for our male counterparts.
Now, if there ever was a reason to hand the morning rush over to your other half, this is it, ladies.
The study, which was led by clinical psychologist and sleep expert Michael Breus, estimated men and women’s respective needs for sleep by assessing their ability to deal with insufficient rest. According to the pro, the experiment suggested a sharp difference between genders. “We found that women had more depression, more anger, and more hostility early in the morning,” he told reporters when the study was released.
Angry and hostile? Ouch, guys! But wait, it gets better:
The reason we need more sleep according to science, is not all the surprising either to most women. Because although many biological factors are thought to contribute to the disparity in how much we need to sleep, experts involved with the study believe that it ultimately comes down to mental energy expenditure. Women, they say, simply use their brain more than men do.
“One of the major functions of sleep is to allow the brain to recover and repair itself. 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,” Jim Horne, director of the Sleep Research Center at Loughborough University in England, told an Australian newspaper.
“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.”
So with that, ladies, show this study to your family (husband mostly), take your over-worked brain with you and crawl back under the covers. Doctor’s order!
