Ben Franklin’s early-to-bed sleep prescription may have helped him prevent the onset of metabolic disease – but only if his schedule didn’t vary much, suggest the results of a new study.
While previous research has shown a link between lack of sleep and metabolic health problems such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol, the new study looked at the impact of irregular sleep duration and timing. The more these issues varied, the higher the prevalence of metabolic abnormalities, the authors found.
“Even after considering the amount of sleep a person gets and other lifestyle factors, every one-hour night-to-night difference in the time to bed or the duration of a night’s sleep multiplies the adverse metabolic effect,” said study author Tianyi Huang, Sc.D., epidemiologist of the Channing Division of Network Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston.
