Generally, sleep deprivation can increase the risk of type 2 diabetes, but according to a new study, the catch-up sleep on weekends can reverse the effect of sleep deprivation.
Short-changing sleep during the weekdays and sleeping for longer periods on the weekend is a common sleeping habit for the US residents.
Although, according to another study, it was suggested that sleeping four to five hours a day can increase the risk of type 2 diabetes, yet according to the new study, the risk might be reversed with two days of extra sleep.
"I have to say that this is a small, very short-term controlled study involving only healthy men," said study lead author Josiane Broussard, an assistant research professor with the Sleep and Chronobiology Laboratory at the University of Colorado in Boulder.
"In real life, you'd be losing sleep week in and week out, so we don't know whether catch-up sleep can give you this kind of risk improvement in that context. But the good take-away from this work is that at least in terms of diabetes risk, it seems that you're not necessarily totally screwed if you experience sleep loss," said Broussard.
The findings of the research were published on Jan. 18 in Diabetes Care.
For the research, 19 healthy young men were initially allowed to sleep up to 8.5 hours per night (between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m.) for four consecutive nights. According to authors of the study, they slept an average of 7.8 hours a night.
Additionally, the "normal" sleep period or four day was followed by a glucose tolerance test to see the diabetes risk.
Then the same group of men were placed on a lab - controlled sleep deprivation schedule where each volunteer could sleep just 4.5 hours a night (between 1 a.m. and 5.30 a.m.) for four consecutive nights. After that they were given another glucose tolerance test.
The third step of the study included the men having "recovery" sleep for two days, where they were allowed up to 12 hours of sleep on the first recovery day (10 p.m. to 10 a.m.) and up to 10 hours of recovery sleep on the second day. This was followed by a glucose test. On average, these men slept for 9.7 hours a night.
According to the study, the men had 23 percent drop in insulin sensitivity compared to normal levels after four days of too little sleep.
However, the two days of recovery sleep showed that both insulin sensitivity levels and the disposition index fully rebounded after the catch - up sleep.
"Whether a pre-diabetic or overweight person would improve is really not known," cautioned Broussard. "And while I would hypothesize that women who also have impairments when sleep-deprived would also improve, there could be a difference in the degree of their improvement. So really this study raises many more questions than we answer."
He was supported by Frank Scheer, a neuroscientist at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.
"This is one of the first well-controlled studies on the effects of sleep recovery on blood glucose regulation, using a relevant weekday-weekend sleep restriction-recovery design," he said.
