With our modern, fast-paced lives, we’re getting less sleep and a poorer quality of sleep overall. It’s natural to think that a couple nights of only sleeping four to six hours won’t cause any harm. However, research shows this isn’t the case.
Why’s that?
Sleep Is an Important Part Of Good Health
When you fall asleep at night, your brain takes the time to perform several daily tasks, such as memory consolidation and cleansing itself of toxins. This activity seems to require more energy, as the brain triggers the body to increase glucose production while you sleep.
Normally, this is not a problem as your body’s natural glucose productions and insulin production levels increase gradually until you wake in the morning. When people start getting less sleep, irregular sleep, or not sleeping as deeply, the trouble starts.
Short-Term Sleep Deprivation Has a Big Effect
A study published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism in 2004 found that sleep deprivation starts having a major impact on glucose homeostasis in days. The researchers started with a group of 11 healthy men and limited their sleep to four hours a night for six days. At the end of the six days, these men developed impaired glucose tolerance. Additionally, the researcher found that the participant’s mean leptin levels decreased on average by 19%. This is important because leptin is a hormone that suppresses the appetite. With less of this hormone, you’ll start craving more food, which combined with impaired glucose tolerance can significantly raise glucose in the bloodstream.
These same researchers later repeated the experiment with 12 healthy men, but only reduced their sleep for two days. They saw similar results with an 18% decrease in leptin levels along with higher glucose levels and lower insulin levels.
What Does It Mean?
Getting enough, high-quality sleep is important to maintaining your glucose tolerance and homeostasis. Just a few nights of difficult sleep can have a major impact on health, especially for diabetics who already have difficulty controlling their blood sugar. Take the
time to get between seven to nine hours of sleep a night to help your body in maintaining appropriate glucose, insulin, and hormone production.
[expand title=”References“]
National Sleep Foundation. URL Link. Accessed March 21, 2017.
Sleep and Glucose Intolerance/Diabetes Mellitus. URL Link. Accessed March 21, 2017.[/expand]
