lack of sleep can cause diabetes?

May 17, 2012

In the United States, 18 percent of adults are estimated to get less than

six hours of sleep

Feeling tired? Your lack of rest may be putting you at increased risk of

obesity and type 2

<http://www.diabeteshealth.com/> . That's the conclusion of a new paper,

published in The American Journal of Human Biology, that looked at evidence

collected from numerous experimental and observational studies. The link was

clear: People who got less than six hours of sleep a night were more likely

to have a high body mass index (BMI) and be obese. The connection found in

the study seems stronger for children and teenagers, which is especially

worrisome given the skyrocketing rates of type 2

young people.

" In the United States, 18 percent of adults are estimated to get less than

six hours of sleep, which equates to 53 million short sleepers who may be at

risk of associated obesity, " said the paper's author, Dr. Knutson of

the University of Chicago. " Poor sleeping patterns are not random, and it is

important to consider the social, cultural, and environmental factors which

can cause inadequate sleep so at-risk groups can be identified. "

But how exactly does lack of sleep increase obesity? The paper suggests that

lack of sleep affects production of the hormones that make us hungry and

tell us when we're full. Translation: If you don't sleep, you're going to

feel hungry, and you're going to want to eat a lot.

" Obesity develops when energy intake is greater than expenditure. Diet and

physical activity play an important part in this, but an additional factor

may be inadequate sleep, " Knutson said. " A review of the evidence shows how

short or poor-quality sleep is linked to increased risk of obesity by

deregulating appetite, leading to increased energy consumption. "

Knutson said that most of the available sleep research comes from Western

countries, which suggests that more research is needed to tease out the

connections between lack of sleep and obesity. Ultimately, scientists will

also need to prove the opposite: that sleeping longer and better can improve

our health.

At the very least, we could try that option for ourselves. It couldn't hurt.

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