[acb-diabetics] lack of sleep can cause diabetes?

[Patricia LaFrance-Wolf]

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/browse/community/type-2-issues/> diabetes
<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
<http://www.diabeteshealth.com/browse/community/type-2-issues/>  diabetes in
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. Kristen 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.

Source
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajhb.22219/abstract

 

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