Case Closed! Women Need More Sleep than Men, Study Finds

Wonder why most women wake up grumpier in the mornings? That is because they do not get enough sleep. And a latest study by Duke University just confirms it.

Lead researcher Dr Michael Breus explained that women actually might be in distress in the mornings due to higher inflammation levels.

Lack of proper sleep leads to various health problems in women such as risk of developing heart diseases, depression, psychological problems and strokes.

Dr Breus and his research team also found that men do not develop the ailments that afflict  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, according to The Australian.

He advised women to take naps of minimum  25 minutes and not more than 90 minutes. Long naps could make them sleepier, 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, via the news organization."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."

Professor Horne explained that as women multi-task that makes them more flexible and they try to do everything at one go. This means that their brain usage is more compared to men, which explains why they need more sleep. "A man who has a complex job that involves a lot of decision-making and lateral thinking may also need more sleep than the average male - though probably still not as much as a woman," he concluded.