people with diabetes<\/a>.<\/p>\nThey included 23,475 participants, aged 20 to 80, from serial waves of the\u00a0National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES)\u00a0between 2009 and 2023 in their analysis: 10,817 of them had available data on weekend sleep duration.<\/p>\n
Weekend catch-up sleep was categorised as none; up to 1 hour; 1 to 2; and more than 2. The eGDR was calculated using a formula involving waist circumference, fasting blood glucose, and blood pressure.<\/p>\n
The average eGDR among participants was 8.23, and on weekdays, they slept for an average of 7 hours and 30 minutes. Just over 48% of them reported catch-up sleep at the weekend. Those with weekend sleep data slept for an average of 8 hours at the weekend.<\/p>\n
Analysis of the data revealed an inverted U shaped curve between sleep duration and eGDR, with a sweet spot of 7 hours and 18 minutes.<\/p>\n
Below this threshold, getting more nightly sleep was associated with higher eGDR; above it, more nightly sleep was associated with a lower eGDR, particularly among women and those between the ages of 40 and 59.<\/p>\n
Further statistical analysis showed that for those sleeping less than the optimal threshold during the week, 1\u20132 hours of weekend catch-up sleep was associated with higher eGDR compared with none.<\/p>\n
But for those sleeping more than the optimal weekday sleep threshold, more than 2 hours of weekend catch-up sleep was associated with a lower eGDR after accounting for potentially influential factors, such as lifestyle, ethnicity, marital status, and educational attainment.<\/p>\n
“Importantly, there appears to be a bidirectional relationship between sleep and metabolism. For instance, poor glycemic status itself has been linked to a higher likelihood of both short and extended sleep durations, as well as sleep disorders,” explain the researchers.<\/p>\n
“This creates a potential vicious cycle wherein metabolic dysregulation disrupts normal sleep patterns, and the resultant abnormal sleep (including extended duration) further aggravates metabolic health.”<\/p>\n
This is an observational study, and as such, no firm conclusions can be drawn about cause and effect. And the researchers acknowledge that the study relied on self-reported data on sleep duration, and they couldn’t rule out reverse causation whereby disrupted glucose metabolism may interfere with sleep rather than the other way round.<\/p>\n
But they conclude: “These correlational findings suggest that sleep patterns, particularly weekend recovery sleep, may be relevant for metabolic regulation in diabetes and could inform considerations for healthcare professionals in managing patient care.”<\/p>\n
Source:<\/p>\n
Journal reference:<\/p>\n
Fan, Z., et al. (2026) Association of weekday sleep duration and estimated glucose disposal rate: the role of weekend catch-up sleep.\u00a0BMJ Open Diabetes Research & Care. DOI: 10.1136\/bmjdrc-2025-005692.\u00a0https:\/\/drc.bmj.com\/content\/14\/2\/e005692<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sleeping for 7 hours and 18 minutes every night may be the sweet spot for warding off the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27327,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[4250,3535,4252,6981,134,4254,13264,1927,4690,111,139,69,1518,2863,13265],"class_list":["post-312043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-blood","tag-diabetes","tag-glucose","tag-glucose-metabolism","tag-health","tag-insulin","tag-insulin-resistance","tag-metabolic-disorders","tag-metabolism","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-research","tag-sleep","tag-type-2-diabetes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}