“Sleep is a time for your body to rest and repair, but a lot of things happen as you move through the sleep stages throughout the night,” says Josie Bidwell, DNP, an associate professor at the University of Mississippi Medical Center School of Medicine in Jackson. During sleep, says Dr. Bidwell, your brain stores memories, your muscles are repaired, your heart rate goes down, and your blood pressure falls. Lower resting heart rate and blood pressure are particularly important if you have type 2 diabetes, since having the condition makes you twice as likely to be diagnosed with heart disease.
Sleep is also essential for hormone regulation, and insulin is a hormone. “In general, poor sleep plays a role in insulin resistance,” says Bidwell, which occurs when your body has difficulty using insulin to move glucose from your blood into cells. This can result in high blood sugar. “If you are struggling to gain control of your blood glucose, looking at your sleep and doing what you can to get the recommended seven-plus hours can be a game changer,” Bidwell says.
Getting at least seven hours of sleep is the sweet spot for most people. In a study on adults who had prediabetes or were recently diagnosed with — but untreated for — type 2 diabetes, sleeping fewer than five hours or longer than eight hours per night was associated with a higher A1C level compared with those who got a more moderate amount of sleep. Sleeping fewer than six hours per night was also associated with a higher body mass index (BMI), which increases the risk for type 2 diabetes and makes blood sugar levels harder to control.
Losing just a few pounds can improve blood sugar control and reduce the need for medication.
While it’s not clearly understood why sleeping longer may be detrimental to your health, there are many potential hormonal changes that occur with sleep loss. “There is a biochemical cascade driven by inflammatory substances, such as cytokines, after sleep loss that can set someone up for insulin resistance,” notes Bidwell. What’s more, as the aforementioned research points out, sleep deprivation activates your sympathetic nervous system, responsible for your fight-or-flight stress response, which can also decrease insulin sensitivity. This is an area of ongoing research.
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