There are a number of factors that are risk factors for getting diabetes (specially the Type 2 variety). These include factors such as the diet, hereditary factors, the amount of exercise that a person gets, and a few others, but very few people would have expected that sleep would be one of the factors. A study has found that too much or too little sleep can affect whether a person developes Type 2 diabetes, or impaired glucose tolerance (link to article):
The risk is 2½ times higher for people who sleep less than 7 hours or more than 8 hours a night, according to the study published in journal Sleep Medicine. To reach the conclusion, researchers analysed the life habits of 276 subjects over a 6-year period. They determined that over the timespan, approximately 20 percent of those with long and short sleep duration developed type 2 diabetes or impaired glucose tolerance versus only 7 percent among subjects who were average duration sleepers.
The researchers also point out that diabetes is not the only risk associated with sleep duration. A growing number of studies have shed light on a similar relationship between sleep and obesity, cardiovascular disease, and overall mortality. The authors observe that among adults, between 7 and 8 hours of nighttime sleep appears to be the optimum duration to protect against common diseases and premature death.
Even though people know that getting atleast 7-8 hours of sleep is optimum, more and more people are getting much lower levels of sleep, not realizing that this fast pace of life is affecting their health.
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