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ENDOCRINOLOGY 01.19.2016

Catch-Up Sleep Helps Counter Metabolic

Effects of Insomnia
Up late all week? Sleeping till noon on Saturday may
help
by Parker

Brown
Staff Writer, MedPage Today

This article is a
collaboration between
MedPage Today and:

Two nights of good sleep appeared to reverse the negative metabolic effects that can
come with short-term sleep deprivation, according to a new study.
Researchers took 19 participants, all of them "lean" young men, and restricted their sleep
to only 4.5 hours in bed for four consecutive nights. The participants were then allowed
two consecutive nights of 12 hours in bed on the first night and 10 hours on the second
night.
Insulin sensitivity was reduced by 23% after sleep restriction compared to normal sleep (at
about 8 hours a night), but gained about half of that reduction back after sleep recovery,
according to Josiane Broussard, PhD, at the University of Colorado Boulder, and
colleagues.
"A common question is whether, and how quickly, an individual can recover from the
adverse effects of sleep loss on glucose homeostasis. We have demonstrated that 2 nights

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of recovery sleep averaging nearly 10 hours per night following 4 nights of sleep
restriction in healthy young lean men is sufficient to improve insulin sensitivity," they
wrote in Diabetes Care.
Acute insulin response to glucose did not differ between any of the sleep conditions, they
reported, and disposition index -- a measure of insulin sensitivity multiplied by acute
insulin response to glucose -- was reduced by 16% after sleep restriction when compared
with normal sleep, but returned to normal after recovery sleep.
"The metabolic response to this extra sleep was very interesting and encouraging," said
co-author, Esra Tasali, MD, of the University of Chicago, in a press release. "It shows that
young, healthy people who sporadically fail to get sufficient sleep during the work week
can reduce their diabetes risk if they catch up on sleep during the weekend."
Participants received standardized meals 24 hours to each intravenous glucose tolerance
test, which was done after the normal, restricted, and recovery sleep sessions. Researchers
tracked the normal sleeping habits of the participants prior to the study and found that
they slept an average of 7.8 hours. During sleep restriction, they slept 4.3 hours, and during
sleep recovery 9.7 hours. Weight was measured prior to each intravenous glucose
tolerance test and was similar between sleep conditions.
"This data is clinically relevant because such sleep patterns (i.e., short-term sleep
restriction on workdays and recovery sleep on weekends) are quite common in modern
society," the authors wrote.
Limitations of the study include the laboratory setting, which may not reflect the real
world conditions, and its relatively short duration.
"Future studies in real-world settings are needed to investigate whether catching up on
sleep could be an effective behavioral intervention in the prevention and management of
type 2 diabetes," Broussard's group concluded.

The study was supported by the NIH and the U.S. Department of Defense.

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Broussard disclosed support from the Society in Science, the Branco Weiss
Fellowship, administered by the ETH Zrich.
Broussard and co-authors disclosed no relevant relationships with industry.

Primary Source
Diabetes Care
Source Reference: Broussard J, et al "Two nights of recovery sleep reverses the effects of short-term sleep restriction on diabetes
risk" Diab Care 2016; DOI: 10.2337/dc15-2214.

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