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Is Your Sleep Deprivation Leading You to Diabetes?
Pop quiz: Which of the following words does not seem to go with the others?
If you said sleep, you're right. Er, you're wrong actually. While sleep may not seem like it belongs in the same category as words that revolve around weight, it actually has everything to do with weight and whether or not you're at risk for diabetes. Two fascinating studies that just came out to further prove it:
I don't know about you, but I think that's pretty remarkable...and scary. This change in physiology, by the way, in the second study happened over the course of just two weeks as healthy adults were forced to get by on only five hours a night.
None of this was news to me. I've written numerous times about the impact of quality sleep in our ability to lose and maintain a healthy weight, and avoid the ravages of diabetes.
Other studies have also shown what happens when we miss out on sleep. We can't seem to go a day without more news about our diabetes and obesity problem. But I still find that the conversation about this hugely popular topic often gravitates toward access to healthy diet choices, and ways to get more regular physical activity. What about access to more and better sleep?
Sweet Dreams,
Michael J. Breus, PhD
The Sleep Doctor™
www.thesleepdoctor.com
Related Topics:
- Obesity
- Calories
- Insulin
- Sleep
- Fat
If you said sleep, you're right. Er, you're wrong actually. While sleep may not seem like it belongs in the same category as words that revolve around weight, it actually has everything to do with weight and whether or not you're at risk for diabetes. Two fascinating studies that just came out to further prove it:
- One study out of a sleep lab at Penn State College showed that insomniacs who slept only five to six hours a night had greater odds of developing diabetes.
- The other study, this one from the University of Chicago and published recently in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, demonstrated that sleep deprivation mixed with sedentary living and free access to food can change the body's physiology to the point it resembles that of a prediabetic. In other words, the body's insulin resistance and glucose tolerance shifts, leaning toward a dangerous condition that's a precursor to full-blown diabetes.
I don't know about you, but I think that's pretty remarkable...and scary. This change in physiology, by the way, in the second study happened over the course of just two weeks as healthy adults were forced to get by on only five hours a night.
None of this was news to me. I've written numerous times about the impact of quality sleep in our ability to lose and maintain a healthy weight, and avoid the ravages of diabetes.
Other studies have also shown what happens when we miss out on sleep. We can't seem to go a day without more news about our diabetes and obesity problem. But I still find that the conversation about this hugely popular topic often gravitates toward access to healthy diet choices, and ways to get more regular physical activity. What about access to more and better sleep?
Sweet Dreams,
Michael J. Breus, PhD
The Sleep Doctor™
www.thesleepdoctor.com
Related Topics:
Labels: diabetes, sleep deprivation, weight loss
3 Comments:
Can we reverse the physiology change if we start sleeping 7-8 hours instead? Also, does the sleep amount have to happen in a set block of time or could it be 5-6 hours overnight, and then an hour in the day?
How do you know it isn't the other way around? We need to lose this "blame the victim" attitude. How do you explain diabetes disappearing within three days of bariatric surgery? How do you explain low birth weight babies later getting diabetes. It seems to me that no one knows what's really causing diabetes. Remember ulcers?
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