People who slept more than an hour each day were 45 percent more likely to develop type 2 diabetes, a debilitating condition associated with overweight and a sedentary lifestyle, the study found.
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But if you nap less than an hour, the risk disappears, the researchers suggested.
Each of the participants had recorded their daily levels of napping and been tested for Type 2 diabetes.
But the Japanese researchers found no increased risk caused by naps shorter than 60 minutes.
While taking a short afternoon nap is good for health, long daytime nap could increase your diabetes risk, warns a new study by researchers at the University of Tokyo.
The team also point out how important sleep is for a healthy life, but some people don’t get enough of it due to “social life and work life related factors”.
He said the possible connection between long daytime naps and a risk for type 2 diabetes is interesting.
Scientists from Japan analysed data from 21 different studies, which encompassed more than 300,000 people.
The study, they added, has yet to be published in a peer-reviewed science journal.
However, the findings revealed napping was not associated with an increased risk of obesity for either shorter or longer naps.
“Although the mechanisms by which a short nap might decrease the risk of diabetes are still unclear, such duration-dependent differences in the effects of sleep might partly explain our finding”.
Dr Tomahide said: “Several studies have demonstrated beneficial effects of taking short naps less than 30 minutes in duration, which help to increase alertness and motor skills”.
Other experts commented that it’s also highly likely for patients to have had developed diabetes prior to the manifestation of sleepiness, and that the development of which might have actually been what causes patients to feel sleepy in the first place. This, in turn, can increase our risk of Type 2 diabetes.
Sattar from the University of Glasgow was of the view that now there is a lot of evidence that there is a link between sleep disturbances and diabetes.
The study is being presented at a meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes in Munich. “This could include slightly high sugar levels meaning napping may be an early warning sign of diabetes”, he said, according to The Telegraph.
Over the years, researchers have conducted countless studies in an effort to understand the relationship (or the lack thereof) between diabetes and sleep. “Maybe longer naps are short periods of sleep and more common in those individuals with long working hours, stress all day, working more than one job, and maybe stress is associated with fast-food eating, etcetera”.
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‘Trials bring truth and without proper trials, we simply will never know the answer’.
