Washington, September 30 (ANI): Increasing the amount of sleep that teenagers get could improve their insulin resistance and prevent the future onset of diabetes, a new study has suggested.
"High levels of insulin resistance can lead to the development of diabetes," Karen Matthews, lead author of the study from the University of Pittsburgh, said.
"We found that if teens that normally get six hours of sleep per night get one extra hour of sleep, they would improve insulin resistance by 9 percent," Matthews said.
The study tracked the sleep duration and insulin resistance levels of 245 healthy high school students.
Participants provided a fasting blood draw, and they kept a sleep log and wore a wrist actigraph for one week during the school year. Sleep duration based on actigraphy averaged 6.4 hours over the week, with school days significantly lower than weekends.
Results show that higher insulin resistance is associated with shorter sleep duration independent of race, age, gender, waist circumference, and body mass index.
According to Matthews, the study is the only one in healthy adolescents that shows a relationship between shorter sleep and insulin resistance that is independent of obesity.
The authors concluded that interventions to promote metabolic health in adolescence should include efforts to extend nightly sleep duration. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine reports that most teens need a little more than nine hours of sleep each night.
The study will be published in the journal Sleep. (ANI)
