If you’re keeping an eye on your health, you know to eat right, watch your blood sugar levels, and get enough exercise. But there’s another ingredient in managing your diabetes you might not even think about. The hours you’re asleep might be just as important as the ones you spend at the gym or taking insulin. Lack of sleep and diabetes can be a dangerous combination.
Here’s a breakdown of sleep and diabetes and how they impact each other.
Sleep isn’t just a time to rest. It’s actually more like your brain’s self-cleaning system, according to the National Institute of Health. Your brain and body use the time to clean out toxins; repair everything from your blood vessels to your immune system; and prepare your brain to learn, remember, and create.
Enough quality sleep can improve your mood, health, and overall brain performance. But if you’re regularly not getting enough sleep, your risk of diseases — including stroke, heart disease, obesity, and dementia — increases.
So how much sleep is enough? It depends on your age. Experts recommend at least seven hours per night for adults, with elementary school-aged children needing about nine and teens needing up to 10.
But it’s not just the hours you spend in bed that matter. The quality of your sleep is just as important as the duration. Are you tossing and turning? Are you waking up frequently throughout the night? Interrupted sleep can increase your levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which can make getting back to sleep even more difficult.
Elevated cortisol can also affect your diabetes. When your levels are high, you may need more insulin than normal. And lack of sleep can also affect your diabetes management in the following ways:
But getting enough sleep can have positive effects on your diabetes management, including:
And diabetes can also affect sleep. If your blood glucose levels dip or spike regularly during the night, your continuous glucose monitor (CGM) will alert each time, waking you up. In addition to resulting in increased cortisol levels, these interruptions can leave you feeling exhausted and irritable for work the next day. This is one symptom of Diabetes Distress, a term coined by diabetes researchers to explain the emotional effects of diabetes. And over time, poor sleep can lead to changes in your serotonin levels, the hormone associated with feelings of happiness.
But these sleep interruptions might not just affect you. Your CGM alerts can wake up your spouse, and your frequent trips to have a snack or take insulin may wake up your children, your caregiver, or other members of your household. Now, the whole family is in for a miserable day at school or work, thanks to those alerts.
And CGM alerts aren’t the only thing that can interrupt your sleep. Patients with diabetes can also experience sleep interruptions caused by:
Getting Better Sleep With Diabetes
So how can you break the cycle of poor sleep and increased insulin? Start by talking to your doctor or diabetes educator. They may suggest setting a slightly higher target glucose during the night to reduce the chance of CGM alerts waking you. Some diabetes patients report that using CGMs this way helps them sleep through the night for the first time in years.
Your care team will also work with you to create a plan for managing your blood glucose levels during the night. If your sugar levels tend to run low in your sleep, for example, your care team might decide on a routine of reading your levels and having a protein-heavy snack, like beef jerky, before bed. This can help reduce the risk of hypoglycemic events during the night, so you can sleep without CGM interruptions.
But sometimes, your problem might not be staying asleep without interruptions. It might be getting to sleep in the first place. In that case, you might try some of these techniques.
A CGM can be life-changing for patients with diabetes because it’s an easier, more comprehensive, and more convenient way to manage your health and improve your quality of life.