In March 2024, a 12.5-year study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Researchers analyzed data from 240,000 participants aged 38 to 71. It was found that no matter how healthy you eat, poor sleep can easily lead to diabetes and high blood sugar.
After adjusting for intervening factors such as lifestyle, underlying health conditions, and history of chronic disease, the researchers found that short sleep duration was associated with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes.
The shorter the sleep duration, the higher the risk, and a healthy diet cannot compensate for the effects of insufficient sleep.
Chronic sleep deprivation can cause a series of negative physiological changes, including overstimulation of the sympathetic system, increased secretion of epinephrine, cortisol, and other blood sugar hormones, thereby causing insulin resistance.
Once insulin resistance occurs, the rate of insulin absorption and use of glucose will cause the body to secrete a large amount of insulin to compensate, leading to hyperinsulinemia. If left untreated for a long time, it will progress to diabetes.
