Oversleeping During Weekends Can Help Reduce Risk for Diabetes

Lack of sleep can increase our risk for health problems especially diabetes. However, a small study in the United States reveals that catching up with your sleep during weekends may counteract this risk.

Reuters reports that oversleeping on weekends to make up the lost hours during the week may reduce one's risk for diabetes.

"It gives us some hope that if there is no way to extend sleep during the week, people should try very hard to protect their sleep when they do get an opportunity to sleep in and sleep as much as possible to pay back the sleep debt," said lead study author Josaine Broussard of the University of Colorado Boulder as Reuters reports.

The team of scientists evaluated 19 volunteers of healthy young men for the short-term study. They found that four nights of sleep deprivations can result to changes in their insulin sensitivity or the body's ability to regulate sugar.

For the team to establish a link between sleep and diabetes risk, they concentrated on the insulin sensitivity of the participants. This is the ability of the body to use insulin to regulate blood sugar. Most often, impaired insulin sensitivity can lead to type 2 diabetes which is prevalent among obese and older adults. This happens when the body fails to convert blood sugar into energy.

To know the impact of sleep to our insulin levels, the researchers conducted two experiments. The group of men was restricted to sleep for 4.5 hours for four nights followed by two nights of oversleeping. The same group of men was also advised to sleep 8.5 hours for four nights as well for comparison.

The lack of sleep resulted to a decrease of 24 percent in the men's insulin sensitivity reports Daily Mail UK. Their bodies were also found to produce extra insulin. When they were allowed to oversleep for two nights, this surprisingly stabilized their blood sugar to normal levels.

External factors such as their food intake were controlled to minimize any influence on the outcome. Sleep-deprived individuals on a normal setting tend to eat more with a preference to sweets and high-fat foods. This limits how much result can be gained in the reality, the researchers admitted.

However, senior study author Dr. Esra Tasali, of the University of Chicago, said: 'The metabolic response to this extra sleep was interesting and encouraging, reports Daily Mail.

The researchers note that the study does not prove that sleeping in late on weekends can decrease the effects of insufficient during weekdays. Further studies are needed to establish a link of oversleeping during weekends and other health problems.