Recently published sleep research suggests that
- adolescents who cut down on sleep risk an increase in body weight, and
- sleeping less than 6-8 hours a night leads to a 12% increase in the risk of dying early, and
- even short periods e.g. one night of very reduced sleep can lead to resistance to the hormone insulin and potentially to developing type 2 diabetes.
These studies’ conclusions do not, however, mean that a few nights of reduced sleep will make you fat, develop type 2 diabetes or die in the near future; the message seems to be that 6-8 hours sleep a night is not just the norm, but really, really good for us !