I was reading an article posted under the "Topics of the Week" and was shocked to learn that women with difficulty sleeping developed more health problems in their future than men with similar sleep patters. The difference lie mainly in heart problems and the production of insulin, leading to type II diabetes. As an insomniac myself, I was forced to do a little more research on the subject.
I found quite a few articles similar to the one posted, and then found another with completely different results. A study conducted in 2003 by the National Sleep Foundation.
The National Sleep Foundation took a group of 25 healthy men and women and regulated their sleep to study the results. The first thing I noticed about this study was the decreased number of participants it used compared to the study conducted by Duke University Medical Center who used 210 participants. These 25 participants were allowed to sleep 8 hours for the first four days and only six for the rest of the week. The conclusion of this study was that the men had higher levels of tumor necrosis factor, which is a protein that increases inflammation and can lead to heart attacks, high blood pressure, and insulin resistance (this leads to Type II Diabetes).
So many times studies are posted related to health, but how accurate are they really? Here are two studies with two completely opposite conclusions. How does the public know the truth? Obviously sleep is a very important factor in the quality of everyone's life, but does the lack of sleep really affect one sex more than the other? How do we know which studies are accurate and which are overly affected by factors not even taken into consideration during the experiment?
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I think one major difference between the two studies that you mentioned is that the first is about long term effects, while the second deals with short term consequences. Personally, I would trust the first study more, as it was perfomed by Duke University, and reseach universities are usually reputable. I'm hesitant with the second study, because I've never heard of the National Sleep Foundation, and like you said, they use a very small sample size. I think there are clear differeces between men and women on every health issue, including sleep. The one thing that surprised me was that you said women are more likely for heart problems in this specific pattern, as I know that overall, women usually have stronger heart.
I read somewhere else that most women who have minor heart attacks are untreated simply because women can tolerate more pain than men. I'll have to find that study as well so I can post it for you. I think the majority of women who do have heart problems don't know anything about it since they tend to avoid going to the doctor more than men do (at least that's what the study indicated, but I'm not sure if it's true or not).
You're probably right about the study done by Duke being more reliable, but still, if someone were to only read the National Sleep Foundation's study, people are left a little misinformed....
Women tend to have lots of little heart attacks, because they tend to ignore chest pain. Then, when a big heart attack comes, they're more likely to die from it, because they've had lots of little heart attacks, killing the heart tissue to some degree.
One of the problems in medicine is that a lot of these clinical trials focus on men. But we know women function differently. We have lots more estrogen, and not as much testosterone. We have plenty of other hormone differences, and all these can affect the ways in which medicines function in us.
~C
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One article says one thing, the other another. I'm sure that other articles say another, I won't even bother googling. Will we ever know the truth? Probably not. I mean there are so many other factors, it's hard to isolate them all.
+mspin
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/weezyf
Two things. First, I love you. I have so few people doing blogs on my TotW that I tend to have difficulty coming up with new topics, since no one has written on my old ones. Second, tags are your friend. They help your blog get indexed in search engines, and thus get more exposure. Use them. :-)
~C
Check out the latest entry in the Between The Lines column!
Want the highest rated list to change? RATE those blogs, then!
Thanks for the advice on the tags. I am never very good at thinking of all of the best tags to add, so I just added a bunch that came to mind. I can always add more in an edit (now THAT is a great feature!)
Thanks again!
Did they perhaps explain WHY men seem to be more effected, at least in that particular area?
They didn't say anything about the "why," only provided the results of their findings. I'll see if I can do a little more research or maybe a better article describing this experiment and see if they are able to provide any more information. That IS a really good question, but it only said that women handle a lack of sleep better than men (in this study).
I'll post what I find.
I found something on WebMD that states that sleep apnea causes heart problems in men - maybe this is what the sleep study found?
http://men.webmd.com/news/20050317/mens-sleep-apnea-increases-heart-prob...