In this study of more than 336,999 United Kingdom adults, researchers utilized a technique called Mendelian Randomization to genetically group people according to a code said to be randomly assigned at birth. The researchers looked at five sleep measures – chronotype, napping habits, degree of daytime sleepiness, duration of nighttime sleep and insomnia – and compared those measures to average blood sugar levels in the individual study subjects.
The researchers found that people with sleep problems, such as difficulty in falling asleep, trouble staying asleep or insomnia, tended to have higher blood sugar levels than those who typically didn’t experience sleep problems. High blood sugar is disruptive to the metabolism and dangerous to health, with chronic high blood sugar typically leading to a pre-diabetic state or the development of type 2 diabetes. While there are multiple factors at play in determining type 2 diabetes risk, including weight, diet and physical activity levels, it makes sense to control what you can and, as demonstrated by this recent study, sleep quality appears to be one of those blood-sugar-increasing factors.
https://www.chronobiology.com/insomnia-boosts-diabetes-risk-raises-blood-sugar-levels/
