Study finds 7 hours and 19 minutes of sleep may be best for insulin sensitivity

• The estimated glucose disposal rate is a test that can help measure insulin resistance, a primary driver of type 2 diabetes.
• A cross-sectional study found that 7.32 hours of sleep was ideal for the estimated glucose disposal rate.
• Increasing sleep until 7.32 hours was associated with improved estimated glucose disposal rates, while increasing it to or above this amount was associated with worse estimated glucose disposal rates.
• Further analysis suggested that moderate weekend catch-up sleep may be helpful for insulin resistance, but possibly harmful for people already getting enough sleep.

Experts are interested in finding the optimal amount of sleep for different aspects of health. One area of interest is how sleep relates to metabolic syndrome, a cluster of conditions that increase risk for serious diseases like coronary heart disease.

One recent study explored how sleep duration relates to insulin sensitivity, which can be a driving factor for type 2 diabetes.

The authors of this study explain that in metabolic syndrome, the body is less responsive to insulin.

The study, published in BMJ Open Diabetes Research & Care, found that a little less than seven and a half hours of sleep is linked to the best level of insulin sensitivity.

Moreover, for people who got less sleep than this amount, getting over one and up to two hours more sleep on the weekend appeared to help insulin sensitivity the most.