It’s long been known that consistently receiving an adequate amount of sleep each and every night is crucial to good mental and physical health.

For example, regularly receiving 7 to 8 hours of sound sleep per night strengthens your entire immune system and hence, better enables your body to fight common colds and flu viruses. In addition, regular and consistent sleep also improves cognitive function and enhances mental focus, clarity, complex problem solving, and overall levels of concentration.

However, inadequate sleep, over time, can lead to a whole host of mental and physical issues including heart disease, obesity, fatigue, mental instability, irritability, depression, and lack of motivation, to name a few.

In addition, a newly published sleep and diabetes study indicates that the quality of your sleep is also influential on your disease risk. According to the study, sleeping inconsistently or sleeping too little could directly increase your likelihood of developing Type 2 diabetes.

Poor or Insufficient Sleep Significantly Lowers Insulin Levels

During the study conducted by Brigham and Women’s Hospital, researchers monitored 21 healthy adults in a laboratory setting for a total of three weeks. The subjects lived in the lab for the duration of the study, allowing the researchers to carefully monitor and dictate their sleep patterns.

The researchers placed the participants on a limited-sleep schedule in which they were only allowed to sleep for less than six hours each day. The subjects were also required to stay awake slightly longer each day, effectively putting them on a 28-hour clock instead of a 24-hour one.

As the study continued, the researchers collected blood samples from the participants and analyzed them to measure levels of various hormones, including insulin, cortisol, ghrelin and leptin. The latter two hormones are designed to regulate appetite, while cortisol affects stress levels and insulin regulates blood sugar.

After analyzing the samples, the researchers found that the average participant in the study experienced a 32% reduction in the quantities of insulin released by their bodies following a meal. As a result, the subjects were so impaired in their natural regulation of blood sugar that the researchers ended the experiment, fearing that the participants would develop diabetes if the study continued.

Experts Weigh In

Dr. Vivian Fonseca, president of science and medicine of the American Diabetes Association and endocrinology department head at Tulane University School of Medicine, said that the Brigham and Women’s study adds to a growing body of evidence indicating that sleep deprivation is somehow related to conditions such as obesity and diabetes. According to Fonseca, who was not directly involved in the study, the link may be due to the fact that sleep patterns directly influence hormone levels.

Lisa Rafalson, a pediatrics professor at the University of Buffalo, agreed with Fonseca’s interpretation of the study. She said that “chronic, ongoing sleep deprivation” can essentially be thought of as an injury to the body that continues over time.

Specifically, Rafalson believes that the link between sleep deprivation and Type 2 diabetes may be due to an overabundance of glucose in the bloodstream as a result of reduced insulin levels. This, in turn, may result from elevated levels of stress hormones which prevent the brain from going to sleep.

The study also helps to disprove the notion that sleep deprivation boosts your diabetes risk because it increases your appetite, a theory suggested by scientists previously. The theory held that a lack of sleep would diminish leptin levels and boost ghrelin levels, making you both hungrier and less likely to feel full upon eating. However, the Brigham and Women’s researchers did not detect changes in the ghrelin and leptin levels of the study participants.

What’s the Solution?

Obviously, the advice that the medical researchers would like to give is to ensure that you’re getting plenty of sleep each night in order to reduce your risk of contracting Type 2 diabetes. However, Americans are sleeping less and less every year, according to Fonseca, and our hectic and busy lifestyles mean that this probably won’t be changing any time soon.

In light of these facts, Fonseca believes that the primary goal for researchers in this field should be to find ways to mitigate diabetes risk other than just getting more sleep.

Sleep and Diabetes: The Bottom Line

Researchers in Boston have discovered that getting too little sleep on a chronic basis can drastically increase your risk of developing Type 2 diabetes. This is likely due to the fact that appropriate sleep is required in order for the body to properly regulate insulin levels.

The full text of the study can be found in the medical journal Science Translational Medicine.