Melbourne, March 14: Beauty sleep is, as it turns out, as essential for men as it is for women, for a new study has found that men who get less than five hours of sleep a night, run the risk of turning obese.

What’s worse is that they are also at the risk of having high levels of blood sugar that could lead to diabetes.

The study, by Japanese researchers, found that getting less sleep triggers a hormone in the blood that stimulates the appetite. This means that men who don’t get enough shuteye tend to find their way to the fridge.

“It (the hormone) increases a sense of hunger as well as an appetite for high-calorie food,” The Australian quoted the study’s lead author, Nihon University medical department associate professor Yoshitaka Kaneita as saying.

As a part of the study, researchers led by Prof Kaneita analyzed 21,693 men in 1999 and followed up to see how they were doing in 2006.

They found that men who were not fat in 1999 were 1.36 times more likely to become obese if, on average, they got less than five hours of sleep a night.

The researchers also found that those not getting enough sleep were also 1.27 times more likely to have high blood sugar levels.