Madrid
Updated:
Keep
People who have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep have higher blood sugar levels than people who don’t have trouble sleeping.
The findings of the research carried out in more than 300.000 People and published in “Diabetes Care” suggest that insomnia may increase the risk of type 2 diabetes and that drug or lifestyle treatments that improve insomnia may help prevent or treat the condition.
The insomnianot getting enough sleep, and going to bed later have been linked to an increased risk of type 2 diabetes. In this study, the University of Bristol-led team assessed whether these associations are explained by the causal effects of sleep traits on blood sugar levels.
The researchers used a statistical technique called Mendelian randomization to see how five measures of sleep – insomnia, sleep duration, daytime sleepiness, napping, and preference for morning or night (chronotype)– were related to average blood sugar levels assessed by a measure called HbA1c levels.
Using Mendelian randomization, which groups people according to a genetic code randomly assigned at birth, allowed the researchers to remove any bias from the results.
The analysis of more than 336,999 adults living in the UK showed that people who reported that they often had difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep had higher blood sugar levels than people who said they never, they rarely or only sometimes had these difficulties.
The team found no clear evidence of an effect of other sleep traits on blood sugar levels.
The results could improve researchers’ understanding of how sleep disturbance influences type 2 diabetes risk.
The study also suggests that Lifestyle and/or pharmacological interventions that improve insomnia could help prevent or treat diabetes.
“An effective treatment for insomnia could result in greater glucose reduction than an equivalent intervention, which reduces body weight by 14 kg in a person of average height,” says James Liu, author of the article.
Future studies to assess the impact of these insomnia treatments on glucose levels in people with and without diabetes could establish potential new treatments for the prevention and treatment of diabetes.
See them
comments