Diabetes and Sleep

Diabetes is a complex area and sometimes it is hard to ascertain causal factors for diabetes. That is, does factor A actually cause diabetes or are they just correlated?

Sleep tends to be one of these areas. If fact there seems to be quite some correlation between sleep, weight and diabetes. Often people with diabetes can be poor sleepers as well as being overweight. It is less clear what cause what however. In any event we can take some learnings.   

So what is diabetes? It is a failure of our bodies either to produce or use the hormone insulin effectively to use glucose for energy. When this process is not working well our blood sugar levels rise and can become harmful especially to the eyes, kidneys, heart and nerves. Now there is much documented evidence to support the effect a poor, high sugar diet has on the development of Type 2 diabetes but there may also be a connection between lack of sleep and insulin resistance (at least in the way in appears to to our bodies). Chronic sleep deprivation may have the potential to lead to a pre-diabetic state. 

Sleep apnea and diabetes also seem to be correlated. That is, people that suffer from sleep apnea may also be diabetic. It may be weight that is the actual problem that links the two. Sometimes sleep apnea is exacerbated by fat deposits that obstruct breathing around the upper airway. So overweight people may be more likely to suffer from sleep apnea and those same people may also have a higher risk of developing Type II diabetes as a result of being overweight.

Unfortunately poor sleep combined with diabetes can lead to a feeling of lack of energy (as your body is not converting glucose to energy effectively AND you are tired). Often sufferers will look to a high kilojoule, high sugar food snack to pep them up which over time may actually exacerbate problems associated with both diabetes and sleep. 

It seems sensible therefore to aim for healthy levels of both sleep and weight when tackling type 2 diabetes.

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