Medics have identified the sleep pattern that most strongly increases the risk of diabetes
Irregular sleep duration was associated with a higher risk of type 2 diabetes. In some cases, too much sleep was more dangerous than not enough.
Both physical and mental health depend on the sleep schedule. Those who do not sleep enough, too much or cannot build a regular rest regime are more prone to cardiovascular diseases, obesity, as well as depression and anxiety disorders. Meanwhile, according to recent research, only 15 per cent of people worldwide manage to maintain a normal sleep schedule, which means sleeping seven to nine hours five days a week.
Researchers from the Brigham Centre for Women's Health (USA), Harvard University, Monash University (Australia) and the University of Manchester (UK) have found a link between irregular sleep patterns and an increased risk of type 2 diabetes. The corresponding scientific article was published by the journal Diabetes Care.
The work analysed data from 84,421 people from the British biobank. The average age of the study participants was 62 years old, and none of them had diabetes at the start of the study. They wore accelerometers - devices that track movement - at night for a week. The people in the sample were then followed for seven and a half years - tracking the development of diabetes mainly through medical records.
It turned out that irregular sleep, when its daily duration varied by more than 60 minutes on average, had a 34 per cent higher risk of type 2 diabetes, even after taking into account gender, age, race, lifestyle, comorbidities, family history of diabetes and obesity rates. The association was most pronounced in people with a low polygenic risk of diabetes and an average sleep duration of more than eight hours per night.
The authors of the research paper noted that it had a number of limitations. For example, some of the participants' lifestyle information was collected five years before the study began, and this could have affected the accuracy of the results. In addition, the estimation of sleep duration based on data for seven days, does not always reflect the long-term mode, and the sample included predominantly healthy white elderly people.
In the future, the researchers plan to examine the association of sleep schedule with diabetes risk in younger people of different racial backgrounds. In addition, in their opinion, special attention should be paid to the biological reasons for the discovered pattern.