London - Having a lie-in at the weekend might feel like a well-deserved luxury, but it could also be a necessity in preventing the onset of diabetes.
Doctors have found that sleeping longer on Saturdays and Sunday mornings can cut the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, the variation that usually strikes in middle age.
Type 2 is known to be linked to lack of sleep and obesity, and can have complications that include strokes, heart attacks, blindness, kidney disease and nerve and circulatory damage, which can eventually require limb amputations.
The Australian researchers said their findings could help improve the health of people who struggle to get enough sleep during our increasingly hectic working weeks.
They monitored 19 healthy men, with an average age of 29, who had got by on around six hours sleep during the week for an average of more than five years.
However, they made up for it at the weekend, regularly lying in for another two hours or more on both nights. Blood samples were taken from the men after the lie-ins and their normal weekday sleeps.
Test results revealed that the hormone insulin – which converts sugar into energy and which stops working properly in type 2 diabetes sufferers – functioned better after the subjects had had a weekend of lie-ins.
People with a decreased sensitivity to insulin are more at risk of developing diabetes.
The researchers, from the University of Sydney, presented their findings at the Endocrine Society’s annual conference in San Francisco in a study believed to be the first to involve men who are regularly sleep-deprived. “We all know that we need to get adequate sleep but that is often impossible because of work demands and busy lifestyles.” said researcher Dr Peter Liu.
“Our study found that extending the hours of sleep can improve the body’s use of insulin, thereby reducing the risk of type 2 diabetes in adult men. Reducing the incidence of this chronic illness is critical.”
Type 2 diabetes accounts for 90 percent of the 2.9 million people diagnosed with diabetes in Britain. Almost one million more are also believed to have it but have not been been diagnosed.
Type 1 diabetes, when the body stops making insulin, is most commonly diagnosed in children.
Traditionally seen as an illness of old and middle age, type 2 diabetes is increasingly common among the under-40s and costs the NHS £10-billion a year – a tenth of its budget.
Although the latest study involved only men, previous research has found that lack of sleep may affect women more adversely than men. - Daily Mail