Too much or too little sleep is associated with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes People who swing between the two have the highest risk For example, those who went from too little to too much sleep had the highest risk, 51% higher than those with consistently normal sleep TUESDAY, July 23, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- Consistently bad sleep is linked to a person’s risk of developing type 2 diabetes , a new study shows. Both too little and too much sleep is tied to diabetes risk, and swinging wildly between the two patterns of poor sleep reflects the most risk, researchers reported recently in the journal Diabetologia . The findings support “the importance of sleep health in midlife, particularly maintaining regular sleep schedules over time, to reduce the risk of adverse cardiometabolic conditions,” said researcher Kelsie Full , a behavioral epidemiologist and assistant professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn.
For the study, researchers analyzed the long-term sleep patterns of more than 36,000 adults participating in a health study of residents in 12 southeastern states in the United States. About 62% of the participants were Black people. The team examined the participants’ sleep patterns based on what they reported at the start of the study, as well as during a follow-up that took place an average of five years later.
Poor sleep was defined as either fewer than seven hours or more than nine hours a night. “One of the main s.