Longer sleep Help Avoid Diabetes?

Diabetes is a disease that can reduce a person's quality of life. However, by simply adding the amount of time sleeping, you may be able to avoid the possibility of this disease.

A small-scale study indicates an early stage, adding hours of sleep on the weekend may help protect against the risk of diabetes. The study found an improvement in insulin sensitivity for those who add hours of sleep on the weekends.

Study author dr. Peter Liu from Los Angeles Biomedical Reseach Institute points out, the importance of adequate sleep for health may already be known, but it is often difficult to achieve due to high work demands and hectic lifestyle. Though the benefits of getting enough sleep is very large, including the ability to reduce the risk of diabetes.

Liu said the study he did found that extending the hours of sleep can increase the body's ability to use insulin, reducing the risk of type two diabetes in older men.

The study involved 19 men without diabetes who had a mean age of 29 years. They average 6.2 hours of sleep for each day, but was asked to add sleep time on weekends as much as 2.3 hours each night.

The participants then underwent sleep laboratory in two separate weekends. They were randomly selected to undergo a sleep variation within that period, such as 10 hours of sleep, six hours of sleep, and 10 hours in bed.

Then the participants underwent blood sugar and insulin levels in the next night to determine their insulin sensitivity. The study found that participants who underwent 10 hours of sleep in the three nights had better insulin sensitivity than the other groups.

"It is important for those who do not get enough sleep every day because of work and hectic lifestyles for taking the time to add sleep on weekends to improve their insulin sensitivity," said Liu.

However, studies are still going to be presented in the annual meeting of the Endocrine Society in San Francisco so that accurate data and conclusions are still waiting until published in a journal.