Poor sleep may worsen diabetes

people with diabetes who sleep poorly have higher blood glucose levels and more difficult to control their disease, a new study shows.

The researchers compared the 40 people with type 2 diabetes 531 people without the disease of sugar in the blood. Investigators have looked at the possible links between the quality of sleep, blood glucose levels and other measures of control of diabetes.

"We found that people suffering from diabetes, there was an association between the quality of poor sleep and worst glucose measurements," said the head of the study Kristen Knutson, Assistant Professor of medicine at the University of Chicago.

"We did not see a relationship among people without diabetes," she said.

The study is published in the may issue of diabetes care.

Previous research found any link between diabetes and poor sleep. Knutson said that it is just an association, cause to effect. "It may be that people with diabetes are more vulnerable to the effects of impaired sleep," she said. "But it could go in both cases." Those who control their diabetes could have sleep worse than those that do, she said.

"We must examine more closely the role of sleep in diabetes", she added.

The study, Knutson monitored sleep by having people to wear wrist activity monitors. "If you move your wrist much, you are probably awake", she said.

The participants also reported on the quality of their sleep.

The researchers found that diabetics with difficulty in sleep had a 23 per cent higher than fasting blood glucose, a 48 p. 100 higher fasting insulin level and an insulin resistance higher than 82 per cent than the normal ties with diabetes.

The findings tend to reflect what we see in clinical practice, said Dr. Joel Zonszein, Director of the Centre of clinical diabetes Montefiore Medical Center in New York.

He, too, stressed that the results beg the question "chicken-egg". "They cannot tell us if higher sugars were caused by bad sleep or if patients who have sugars high does well sleep or other factors causing that," said Zonszein.

Often, he noted, those with type 2 diabetes are overweight, and excess weight can affect the quality of sleep. Obesity is linked with the sleep apnea, in which the patient often stops breathing during the night and is then awakened, for example.

The message home for people with diabetes is to pay attention to the quality of their sleep, agreed Zonszein and Knutson. "If no sleep studies have been done, they want may ask their physician [in regard to some],'" says Zonszein. ".

Stress reduction, which is easier said that done, should be another goal for people with diabetes and poor sleep, he added. "Many people is stressed out, and they sleep well," Zonszein said.

"Don't wait for your doctor to ask you to sleep," says Knutson. "People with diabetes must take seriously their sleep and talk to their doctor."