QUEBEC CITY, Apr 22, 2009 (UPI via COMTEX) -- People who sleep too much or not
enough are at greater risk of developing type 2 diabetes or impaired glucose
tolerance, Canadian researchers said.
The findings, published online in the journal Sleep Medicine, found that the
risk is 2 1/2 times higher for people who sleep less than seven hours or more
than eight hours a night.
Jean-Philippe Chaput, Angelo Tremblay and Jean-Pierre Despres of Universite
Laval a colleagues said that analyzed the life habits of 276 subjects over a
six-year period. They determined that over this timespan, approximately 20
percent of those with long and short sleep duration developed type 2 diabetes or
impaired glucose tolerance versus only 7 percent among subjects who were average
duration sleepers.
Even after taking into account the effect attributable to differences in body
mass among the subjects, the risk of diabetes and insulin resistance was still
twice as high among those with longer and shorter sleep duration than average
sleepers.
Diabetes is not the only risk associated with sleep duration, a growing number
of studies have shed light on a similar relationship between sleep and obesity,
cardiovascular disease, and overall mortality, the researchers added.
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Copyright 2009 by United Press International