All those who have been staying up late at New Year parties better watch out: not getting enough shut-eye could lead to diabetes. Researchers from the University of Chicago found that disturbing the ‘slow wave sleep’ – deep sleep in layman’s terms – of healthy young adults for three nights made them less sensitive to insulin.
This resulted in reduced tolerance of glucose and increased risk of type 2 diabetes, they report in PNAS (study abstract should appear here later).
“Previous studies from our lab have demonstrated many connections between chronic, partial sleep deprivation, changes in appetite, metabolic abnormalities, obesity, and diabetes risk. These results solidify those links and add a new wrinkle: the role of poor sleep quality,” says Eve Van Cauter, one of the study authors (press release).
The finding comes on the heels of another study published last month that found people who reported sleeping for five hours or less nightly were more likely to have diabetes than those who typically got seven hours kip. Sleepy-heads who stay in bed too long were also at risk – nine or more hours was also linked to diabetes (press release).
Van Cauter and colleagues took four women and five men and ruined their sleep by playing noise at them through speakers that was loud enough to disturb, but not quite loud enough to wake them. The subjects were found to be 25% less sensitive to insulin after three nights of this.
“These findings demonstrate a clear role for SWS in the maintenance of normal glucose homeostasis. Furthermore, our data suggest that reduced sleep quality with low levels of SWS, as occurs in aging and in many obese individuals, may contribute to increase the risk of type 2 diabetes,” the paper concludes.
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Image: Alamy