Lack of sleep causes diabetes: November 14 is World Diabetes Day

According to the WHO, India is a home to 65 million diabetic patients, the number being second only to China. Analysis by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) recently revealed that change in lifestyle with lack of sleep were among the top reasons behind the occurrence of the disease.

Stating obesity as other result of lack of sleep, she explained: “Lack of sleep makes people physically and mentally tired, during when the body produces extra hormone that stimulates appetite, thereby piling up on more calories and carbohydrates to get a quick energy boost. These people are more likely to display impaired glucose tolerance.”

The doctors have warned that it’s harder to recover from sleep deprivation if one continues to have lack of sleep.

“During such time the body interprets that sleep deficit as a constant stressor and the chance you’ll get diabetes grows,” she said.

Ashraf Ganie, a prominent endocrinologist and professor of AIIMS, said: “There are several reasons to diabetes, lack of sleep is one of them. It is predicted that by 2030 diabetes mellitus may afflict up to 79.4 million individuals in India vs. 30.3 million in United States.”

“Coronary artery disease is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in India and majority of cases are because of diabetes whose occurrence has several reasons now.”

Ghani has also cautioned that people with the problems of snoring are increasingly on the risk of diabetes.

“This is emerging as bigger problem as with the rising number of patients as sleep apnea have been common among the diabetics,” he said.

Talking on the solutions, Behram Pardiwala, leading internal medicine experts, told that proper sleep is necessary for the proper functioning of the body.

“Diabetes might have several reasons, but by having a proper sleep one can at least avoid one of the prime reason behind the occurrence and as far as the snoring problem is concerned, whose prime reason is overweight, can simply be controlled by loosing weight. It’s just that one should know how to do it,” said the doctor, who is associated with Wockhardt hospital.