Sleep and Metabolic Syndrome

In our fast-paced world, sleep frequently becomes a casualty of the “24/7 model” of the society. Obesity, diabetes and heart disease epidemics seem to go hand in hand with significant and persistent alterations in human metabolism.

Clinical studies have shown that people who sleep less than 6 hours or more than 8 hours a day are often overweight or obese. Obesity has become, at least in the western society, a very common condition. There is a strong connection between sleep apnea and obesity, diabetes and heart disease. In fact, we now know that individuals with untreated sleep apnea are at a greater risk of heart attacks, strokes, development of diabetes and/or hypertension.

Metabolic syndrome (MetS) is defined very differently in the literature, but seems to be defined most of the time by a constellation of findings such as central (abdominal) obesity, diabetes, impaired glucose tolerance or pre-diabetes, abnormally elevated lipids and/or other metabolic abnormalities which accompany what is called insulin resistance (IR). Given the obesity high frequency in the general population, the prevalence of MetS is, undoubtedly, on the rise.