Prolonged Sleep Restriction Affects Glucose Metabolism in Healthy Young Men

Abstract

This study identifies the effects of sleep restriction and subsequent recovery sleep on glucose homeostasis, serum leptin levels, and feelings of subjective satiety. Twenty-three healthy young men were allocated to a control group (CON) or an experimental (EXP) group. After two nights of 8 h in bed (baseline, BL), EXP spent 4 h in bed for five days (sleep restriction, SR), followed by two nights of 8 h (recovery, REC). CON spent 8 h in bed throughout the study. Blood samples were taken after the BL, SR, and REC period. In EXP, insulin and insulin-to-glucose ratio increased after SR. IGF-1 levels increased after REC. Leptin levels were elevated after both SR and REC; subjective satiety remained unaffected. No changes were observed in CON. The observed increase of serum IGF-1 and insulin-to-glucose ratio indicates that sleep restriction may result in an increased risk to develop type 2 diabetes.

The Effect of Sleep Apnea and Insomnia on Blood Levels of Leptin, Insulin Resistance, IP-10, and Hydrogen Sulfide in Type 2 Diabetic Patients

“…Human studies with normal subjects observed an increase in serum leptin in subjects with sleep restriction but not in controls. 17 The studies in the literature suggest that leptin is a proinflammatory hormone. [18][19][20][21] Evidence from our study suggests that sleep deprivation increases circulating leptin and is an additional risk factor that increases inflammation in type 2 diabetic patients.…”

Seafarer fatigue: a review of risk factors, consequences for seafarers’ health and safety and options for mitigation

“…Most studies on the association between sleep and health are based on sleep length [31][32][33] but there is an increasing number of epidemiological studies on the association between sleep quality and health [34]. A causal relation is indicated by experimental demonstration of adverse health effects following a significant reduction of the sleep duration [35,36].…”

“…These metabolic changes indicate an increased risk of metabolic syndrome [1,89,90], which is more prevalent among former shift workers than in workers who have never worked in shifts [91], and among seafarers than in the general population [92]. Short sleep duration is correlated to an increased risk of adult overweight/obesity and some studies claim this to be related to a reduced circulating leptin level relative to what is predicted by fat mass [93], whereas others have found increased circulating leptin levels after a period of short sleep [36]. It should be noted, however, that experimental studies are far from consistent where it concerns the metabolic consequences of short sleep duration [94][95][96].…”

Time-of-day modulation of homeostatic and allostatic sleep responses to chronic sleep restriction in rats

“…It also affects mood regulation (5, 46, 61), as well as metabolic, endocrine, and immune system functions (3, 54, 55). Thus, CSR increases the risk of developing diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease (31,38,42,50,53,62) and contributes to increased mortality rates (30,42).Despite the prevalence and negative consequences of CSR, relatively few studies have investigated how sleep patterns change during CSR in either humans or animal models, and the results from available studies are inconsistent. In humans, several studies reported that homeostatic sleep responses were virtually absent during 4 -14 days of restriction to 3-6 h of sleep per night (5, 18, 23, 61), whereas other studies using 4 -5 days of restriction to 4 h of sleep per night reported the presence of homeostatic responses (1, 15).…”