People with sleep apnea are likely to develop diabetes and weight gain, says Rossana Huerta Albarran at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), primarily because the sleep disorder causes metabolic changes by increasing insulin resistance.
To summarize “poor sleep causes weight gain because the brain sends signals that generate an increase in appetite and the need to consume carbohydrates, this raises cholesterol levels due to metabolic changes that the body generates. If to that one adds that obese people are prone to diabetes, apnea plays a fundamental role.”
On the separate topic of optimal hours for sleep, Rafael Santana, medical specialist at the Sleep Disorders Clinic of the UNAM, says that there is no fixed number of sleep hours, and “it depends on the age and needs of the body, for example an infant sleeps up to 16 hours a day, but for an adult it may be enough four or five hours. What matters is the quality of sleep.”
Source: Science Daily
