Couch potato lifestyle even less healthy for men than women

By Mark Waghorn via SWNS

A couch potato lifestyle is even less healthy for men then women, according to new research.

Spending a few hours on the sofa pigging out on junk food disrupts their glucose control, say scientists.

It harms the response of blood vessels to insulin. The phenomenon occurs in days - and only in men.

A "gender gap" in the effects of sitting all day is the first discovery of its kind, according to the American research team.

"We know that incidence of insulin resistance and cardiovascular disease is lower in pre-menopausal women compared to men," said lead author Professor Camila Manrique-Acevedo, of the University of Missouri.

"But we wanted to see how men and women reacted to reduced physical activity and increased sugar in their diet over a short period of time."

Insulin is released by the pancreas to control glucose levels. Resistance to the hormone is a feature of obesity and type 2 diabetes - fueling cardiovascular disease.

In the study, 36 men and women were exposed to 10 days of reduced physical activity, cutting their count from 10,000 to 5,000 steps per day.

The young and healthy participants also increased daily sugar intake by downing six cans of fizzy drinks.

In the 18 men, scans showed the changes caused decreased insulin-stimulated blood flow in the legs.

There was also a drop in a protein called adropin, which regulates the hormone and is an important biomarker for cardiovascular disease. The same did not occur in the 18 women.

"These findings underscore a sex-related difference in the development of vascular insulin resistance induced by adopting a lifestyle high in sugar and low on exercise," Manrique-Acevedo said.

"To our knowledge, this is the first evidence in humans that vascular insulin resistance can be provoked by short-term adverse lifestyle changes, and it is the first documentation of sex-related differences in the development of vascular insulin resistance in association with changes in adropin levels."

She now plans to examine how long it takes to reverse the vascular and metabolic alterations.

She also wants to more fully assess the impact of the role of sex in the development of vascular insulin resistance.

"This is the first evidence vascular insulin resistance can be provoked by short-term adverse lifestyle changes," Manrique-Acevedo said.

"It is also the first documentation of a sexual dimorphism in the development of vascular insulin resistance in association with changes in adropin levels."

The study was published in the journal Endocrinology.