Longer Sleep Duration Linked to Stable Blood Glucose in Young Adults
Researchers found sleep and blood sugar stability influence each other
Credit: Kinga Howard / Unsplash.
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“Go to bed!” – it’s a phrase most teenagers have heard countless times. For many young people, bedtime is easily pushed aside in favour of Netflix, gaming or just another scroll on their phone. Most already know that sleep is important for concentration, mood and learning. Now, there’s new evidence that it matters for metabolic health too
A new study from the University of Copenhagen and the COPSAC research unit at Herlev and Gentofte Hospital shows that longer sleep is associated with fewer fluctuations in blood sugar – even among healthy 18-year-olds
Large swings in blood sugar can increase inflammation and place strain on the metabolism, potentially contributing over time to conditions such as obesity and diabetes
The link between sleep and metabolic diseases is not new. However, most previous studies have focused on middle-aged adults or individuals at increased risk of diabetes
“For most 18-year-olds, diabetes feels like something far off in the future. We’ve known very little about what blood sugar variability means for this age group,” says senior author Professor Morten Arendt Rasmussen of the Department of Food Science at the University of Copenhagen and COPSAC. “But here we’re seeing similar patterns even in completely healthy young adults.”
More sleep – less sugar craving
The researchers tracked 206 Danish 18-year-olds over two weeks as they went about their normal routines. Participants wore activity trackers to monitor movement and sleep, along with glucose sensors that continuously measured blood sugar levels
The results were clear: on days following longer sleep, participants had more stable blood sugar and fewer extreme spikes
While the researchers had expected to find this link, they were surprised to discover that the relationship also worked in the opposite direction:
“The more stable participants’ blood sugar was during the day, the longer they slept the following night,” says first author and postdoctoral researcher David Horner from COPSAC at Herlev and Gentofte Hospital and the University of Copenhagen. “So this appears to be a two-way relationship – and that’s new.”
Reference: Horner D, Evensen K, Ye Z, et al. Night-to-night sleep duration and wake-anchored glycaemia: associations with continuous glucose monitoring in free-living adolescents. Sleep. 2026:zsag158. doi: 10.1093/sleep/zsag158
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