Type 2 diabetes is a complicated disease with a number of risk factors.

For everyone, including those at risk of or living with type 2 diabetes, eating a well-balanced diet, staying active, and getting adequate sleep are all key components of overall health.

According to new research, people who have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep had higher blood sugar levels than people who do not have sleep problems.

The findings imply that insomnia may raise people’s risk of type 2 diabetes and that improving insomnia through lifestyle or medical treatments may assist to prevent or treat the disease.

In earlier studies, insomnia, insufficient sleep, and a later bedtime have all been associated with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes. The researchers wanted to see if these connections might be explained by sleep features having a causal effect on blood sugar levels.

The researchers employed Mendelian Randomization, a statistical technique, to see how five sleep measures—insomnia, sleep duration, daytime drowsiness, napping, and morning or evening preference (chronotype)—were associated with average blood sugar levels as measured by HbA1c levels. Using Mendelian Randomization, which groups people based on a genetic code that was randomly chosen at birth, the researchers were able to remove any bias from the results.

People who stated they regularly had trouble falling asleep or remaining asleep had higher blood sugar levels than those who said they never, rarely, or just occasionally had these problems, according to a research of over 336,999 adults in the United Kingdom. Other sleep characteristics had no effect on blood sugar levels, according to the researchers.

The findings may help researchers better understand how sleep disruption affects type 2 diabetes risk. The study also implies that improving insomnia through lifestyle and/or pharmacological therapies may assist to prevent or manage diabetes.

“We estimated that an effective insomnia treatment could result in more glucose lowering than an equivalent intervention,” says James Liu, the corresponding author of the paper, adding “which reduces body weight by 14kg in a person of average height.”

“This means,” according to the author, “around 27,300 UK adults, aged between 40- and 70-years-old, with frequent insomnia symptoms would be free from having diabetes if their insomnia was treated.”

Source: 10.2337/dc21-0089

Image Credit: Getty

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