The conclusions of the tiny but in-depth work suggests that those at risk of diabetes have a tendency to get not enough sleep, not enough exercise and eat calorie and saturated fat charged Western diets.
using a randomized crossover design, the study included 5 men and six girls of a median age 40, who had volunteered to join study projects.
The participants fell into the overweight class, reported that they didn’t exercise very often but were otherwise healthy. These partakers reported they slept slightly below eight hours a day.
The team then put the subjects thru 2—day times of controlled exposure to an inactive way of life where unhealthy food was freely available.
The subjects stayed in a lab environment where their activity, sleep, diet and blood chemistry were continually monitored.
The subjects were not permitted to exercise, but preprocessed food was abundant. For one session players were allowed to sleep 8.5 hours a day, for the other session the amount of sleep authorized was cut down to 5.5 hours – achieved by going to bed later and getting up earlier, a well-known pattern for most of us.
Without having the ability to exercise, and trapped with plenty of processed foods, it’s no surprise the partakers gained more than four pounds, no matter how much they slept.
The difference came in their abilities to control their blood sugar – depending on how much sleep they were given subjects responded differently to two common sugar tests.
If a subject did not sleep enough, the blood sugar reading was higher, and there had been less sensitiveness by the body to the sugar-lowering hormone insulin.
Taking this finding a step further, it may well be that shorter sleep patterns might facilitate insulin resistance and reduced glucose toleration, both risks for diabetes.
The good news is that you can significantly cut your chance of this life changing diagnosis by doing two extremely simple things :
1 ) Lose 5%-10% of your current weight, and
2 ) Get half an hour of moderate exercise five days each week.
Naturally this study involved the detailed analysis of only a few subjects, so more work will be needed.
Still, if you’re at risk for diabetes, or concerned about the link between sleep and diabetes, it’s wise to think about how much sleep you get each night, and make changes to that you make enjoying enough actually restful sleep a concern – part of your total plan of eating right and exercising to be healthy.
Next – just head on over to the Daily Health Bulletin for more information on how sleep and diabetes are linked, plus for a limited time get 5 free fantastic health reports. Click here for more details on this study on sleep and diabetes.
