Private MD News

Sleep patterns may be linked to increased risk of diabetes

Updated: 2009-06-09 15:06:14 CST Category: Diabetes

by Laurent Castellucci

Sleep may well be the most underrated healthy lifestyle choice. Researchers specializing in sleep have found that sleeping for too long or too short may be linked to an increased risk of diabetes.

At the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, researchers have presented data that disturbed sleep patterns are linked to health risks in a number of ways.

In one study, people who slept for five hours per night or less were 24 percent more likely to have diabetes, while those who slept nine hours or more a night were 48 percent more likely. The data was taken from the 2005 National Health Interview Survey.

Another study used almost 2,000 patients directly studied in a sleep laboratory. There, the effects of insomnia and short sleep were far more dramatic. Individuals with insomnia who slept for five or fewer hours had almost triple the likelihood of having diabetes than those who slept six hours or more. People who slept for five to six hours were only slightly better off, being slightly more than twice as likely to have diabetes.

Too little sleep has been shown on other studies to be linked to a number of health risks, and those with trouble sleeping should be alert to changes in their health.

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