Increased sleep duration and chronic short sleep duration linked to increased diabetes risk in middle-aged and older women

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-11/d-ssi102715.php

Public Release: 2-Nov-2015
Study suggests increased sleep duration and chronic short sleep duration linked to increased diabetes risk in middle-aged and older women
Diabetologia

Chronic short sleep duration of 6 hours or less or increasing average sleeping time by 2 hours or more over a period of several years increases the risk of developing type 2 diabetes in middle-aged and older women, reports new research published in Diabetologia, the journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD).

Increasing sleep duration by 2 hours or more increased the risk of developing type 2 diabetes by 15% even factoring in variations in diet, physical activity, snoring, sleep apnoea, depression and body-mass index, conclude the researchers led by Dr Elizabeth Cespedes, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, and Kaiser Permanente Division of Research, Oakland, CA, USA, and colleagues.

Previous research has shown that too much or too little sleep increases the risk of diabetes, with the lowest risk shown for those who sleep between seven and eight hours per day. However, there is a lack of research examining long-term changes in sleep duration and related changes in diet, physical activity, weight and subsequent diabetes risk.

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Notably, women who increased their sleep duration were more likely to have been short sleepers to begin with, suggesting that the adverse influence of short sleep duration in mid- life may not be compensated for by later increases in sleep duration. [I'm sure I'm not the only person who was chronically sleep-deprived when I was working, and have been able to get adequate sleep only after I retire.]

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