Be careful if you always experience lack of sleep. Apparenty, people with sleeping problems have higher risk to have diabetes. This was shown from the research done by The Medical Faculty of Chicago University, Plamen Penev. He said, from the result, diabetes disease was not just affected by the unhealthy life style.

“But, the disease can be caused by the minimum hour of sleeping time,” said Penev. He observed 11 volunteers, with 5 men and 6 women. Most of the volunteers were at the age of 40 years old. The participants had the tendency to be overweight and not doing much of exercise, but they were in a healthy condition. The volunteers had the average time of sleep less than 8 hours per day.

For 14 days, they stayed in a laboratory where they slept, doing activities, and diet. Their blood pressures were also being monitored. During the observation, they were not allowed to exercise and junk food was intentionally provided as the daily menu.

For the next 14 days, they were allowed to sleep for 8.5 hours every day. While in the next period, the volunteers were only allowed to sleep for 5.5 hours every day. When the sleeping time was reduced, they tended to sleep late at night and woke up at 6.00 in the morning.

The provided junk food, less physical activities, made the weight even more increasing. The ability of the body to process glucose was also reduced that increase the risk of diabetes.

While being tested after the disturbed sleeping time, the volunteers’ sensitivity of the insulin were down to 25%, which a sign they needed more insulin to reduce glucose. But, disposal of insulin did not increase in 8 volunteers so that there was an increase in the blood glucose to 23%.

This research found that when they were lacking of sleeping time,  the volunteers’ glucose were increasing. Penev said, when the unhealthy lifestyle is combined with the lack of sleep time, triggers the emergence risk of obesity and open the chance of diabetes disease.

Insulin is one of the hormones which is produced by the pancreas which is responsible to control the amount of blood sugar levels and insulin is needed to change (process) carbohydrate, fat, and protein to energy needed by the human body. Insulin hormone functions to decrease the blood sugar.

The estimated number of Americans who suffer from this disease in the next 25 years will be doubled and the main factor is will be obesity, according to the research conducted by Elbert S. Huang in the university of Chicago.

“If people don’t change their life styles, in the next couple of decades will be an increasing number of people suffer diabetes massively,” Elbert said.

Elbert estimated, in 2034, as many as 44 million people in America will develop this disease. This number is increasing from the people who suffer diabetes in America that reached 23 million people.

As published in KORAN SINDO, February 14^th 2014