To Your Health: The impact of sleep on diabetes – The News Guard

Sleep is extremely important in maintaining our body’s performance, not only physically and mentally, but also down to the body’s chemical balances.
Diabetes is a chronic health condition that affects more than 30 million Americans and is the seventh leading cause of death in the United States. 
Most of us know how important weight control, exercise, and nutrition are in controlling blood sugars. What impact does sleep have?
Body maintenance
Sleep is extremely important in maintaining our body’s performance, not only physically and mentally, but also down to the body’s chemical balances. Diabetes, whether type 1 or 2, comes down to an imbalance of the insulin and blood sugar relationship.
The right amount of sleep is needed to keep the endocrine system working well so insulin and blood sugar stays balanced.  Studies have shown that too little sleep (less than 6 hours) or too much sleep (greater than 9 hours) can increase the risk for developing diabetes and make pre-existing diabetes more difficult to control.  Some research suggests a 40% increase in the risk of developing diabetes if sleeping less than four hours per night.  The human body is very complicated, and it needs just the right amount of sleep to work properly.  The recommendation of about 7-8 hours a night comes from years of research to evaluate the amount sleep needed for our bodies to function at their best.
Even if your body is getting the right amount of sleep, the sleep needs to be quality sleep.  Quality sleep is needed to make sure your body is truly rested with good oxygen levels, few awakenings, and can achieve deep sleep.  If the sleep quality is poor, blood sugars will rise and the insulin produced will be less effective, leading to prediabetic conditions or making diabetes difficult to control.
Common sleep disorders
The most common sleep disorders affecting diabetes are Sleep Apnea and Restless Leg Syndrome. Sleep apnea is when the back of your throat keeps collapsing during sleep and oxygen levels fall, leading to disturbed sleep and lack of deep sleep.  Restless Leg Syndrome is a when the legs are moving around a lot during sleep because of pain or tingling and numbness leading to disturbed sleep and lack of deep sleep.
Both these conditions cause a rise in blood sugars, increased insulin resistance, increase in stress hormones such as cortisol and the hunger hormone, ghrelin, all which contribute to diabetes.  Treatment of these sleep disorders will help balance these hormones and help manage and decrease the risk of diabetes.
Not only does poor sleep affect your blood sugars at night, but in the daytime your energy levels will be low leading to poor blood sugar metabolism, lack of exercise, and weight gain over time.  In short, poor sleep will affect night and daytime blood sugars and insulin effectiveness.
Complex relationship
The relationship between sleep and diabetes is complex. Not only do you need good quantity and quality of sleep for better diabetes control and decrease risk of diabetes, but if you have poorly controlled diabetes it will affect your sleep.  This stresses the fact that the approach to diabetic management is a multi-approach program including good sleep, nutrition, exercise, weight loss, and medication as directed by your physician.
Making your sleep health a priority will not only help you cut down your diabetes risk or better manage your diabetes, it will help with your overall well-being, including managing other chronic health conditions.
Steps to healthy sleep include:
Think of healthy sleep as priority in your health management as it can help you avoid unnecessary medications and health complications.  Healthy sleep equals a healthy body.
If you have wellness questions, email them to info@tillamookcountywellness.org.
For more local health and wellness information, visit www.tillamookcountywellness.org or follow Tillamook County Wellness on Facebook and Instagram.
Kam Atwal is a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine Pulmonary / Critical Care / Sleep Medicine at Adventist Health Tillamook.

View our 12-6-22 E-Edition right here!

Your comment has been submitted.

Reported
There was a problem reporting this.
Log In
1. Be Civil. No bullying, name calling, or insults.
2. Keep it Clean and Be Nice. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexually-oriented language.
3. Don't Threaten. Threats of harming another person will not be tolerated.
4. Be Truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyone or anything.
5. Be Proactive. Let us know of abusive posts. Multiple reports will take a comment offline.
6. Stay On Topic. Any comment that is not related to the original post will be deleted.
7. Abuse of these rules will result in the thread being disabled, comments denied, and/or user blocked.
8. PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK.

We’re always interested in hearing about news in our community. Send us your news, photos, and videos and let us know what’s going on!

We’re always interested in hearing about news in our community. Send us your news, photos, and videos and let us know what’s going on!

Sorry, there are no recent results for popular commented articles.
Subscribe for just $60.00/year, or claim your FREE access if you are already a subscriber.
Please disable your ad blocker, whitelist our site, or purchase a subscription

source