A study found that persistent sleep deprivation can increase insulin resistance in otherwise healthy women, with post-menopausal women seeing more severe effects. The study emphasises how important getting enough sleep is to reducing the risk of type 2 diabetes, which is a condition where the body is unable to use insulin, a crucial hormone, to keep blood sugar levels in check.
“Women report poorer sleep than men, so understanding how sleep disturbances impact their health across the lifespan is critical, especially for postmenopausal women," said Marishka Brown, Ph.D., director of the National Centre on Sleep Disorder Research at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), which co-funded the study with the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), both part of NIH.
Restriction of sleep has been linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and disorders of glucose metabolism, which can result in insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. Unfortunately, a lot of research was restricted to men or concentrated on acute, short-term sleep deprivation.
In order to conduct the study, 40 women between the ages of 20 and 75 who had regular sleep schedules (at least 7-9 hours per night) and normal fasting glucose levels were enrolled. These women had elevated risks for cardiometabolic disease because they were obese or overweight, had a family history of type 2 diabetes, had elevated blood lipid levels, or had cardiovascular disease.
