In addition to paying attention to diet and exercise, studies have found that sleep also has a great impact on diabetic patients, and not only does not sleep well, it will cause an impact, but too much sleep may also increase blood sugar. The key is “social jet lag”.
Diabetics are at increased risk of elevated blood sugar if they sleep irregularly, especially if their work and rest cannot match their circadian clock.
A new study published in “Sleep Medicine” found that patients with type 2 diabetes who had a “social jet lag” of more than 90 minutes tended to have higher blood sugar than those without social jet lag. But what exactly is social jet lag?
Supplementing sleep during holidays may cause “social jet lag”
Social jet lag (social jet lag) is a new term in the field of sleep, which refers to the internal biological clock, which cannot match the external “social clock” of work and class, thus forming jet lag.
To put it simply, for example, office workers go to bed late from Monday to Friday and have to get up early. They accumulate sleep until the holidays, so that they get up late on holidays, and the internal biological clock is gradually delayed. You may even have trouble falling asleep on Sunday nights, creating social jet lag.
Not only diabetics, but ordinary people should also be careful
Andrew Coogan, a researcher at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, who led the study, said: “In addition to diabetics, I would also recommend that people in general should try to live according to their biological clocks as much as possible … but unfortunately, It’s hard for most people to do, and if you go to work at 8:30 every morning and the journey takes an hour, that means you have to get up around 7, and the average person may not get up after 9 on weekends.”
In fact, in addition to this latest study, there have been many studies on social jet lag and diabetes in the past. In 2015, a University of Pittsburgh study of 450 middle-aged adults found that people with greater differences in sleep between work days and holidays were more likely to develop risk factors for heart disease and diabetes.
These risk factors include abdominal obesity, high blood sugar, high blood lipids, and a reduction in “good cholesterol (high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, or HDL).”
There is too much difference between weekdays and holidays, and the risk of cardiovascular disease increases
A 2017 study by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine also found that every hour of social jet lag increases the risk of cardiovascular disease by 11%, and may also lead to poor mood and fatigue. There are other studies that suggest that people with diabetes who are accustomed to staying up late may have more difficulty controlling blood sugar.
Till Roenneberg, a Ph.D. in psychology at the University of Munich in Germany, even warned that social jet lag may have a greater impact on the body than the general jet lag going abroad: “Multiple epidemiological and experimental studies in the past have shown that , metabolism, especially the metabolism of blood sugar, will be impacted because the work and rest do not match the biological clock.”
In addition, the relationship between metabolism, body mass index (BMI), and cardiovascular disease is also supported by multiple studies. Before going to bed late or supplementing sleep next time, you may want to think about the chain impact on health.
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