Hello, everyone.
Today I want to share with you an interesting patient case
that may apply to you.
If you landed on my channel, you probably have diabetes
or know someone with diabetes.
What about sleep troubles?
Are they related?
Can lack of sleep, increase your type 2 diabetes risk or
even make your diabetes control worse?
Stay tuned and find out.
So, about four weeks ago, I saw this 42-year-old gentleman
who was referred to me for insulin resistance.
As I evaluated him, I found all the hallmarks of insulin resistance.
Now he had abdominal obesity.
He had skin tags, which we have a video about.
And there's something called "acanthosis nigricans", which
is darkening around his neck.
Look at this.
Check out my previous video,
if you haven't seen it already,
more about insulin resistance.
So I asked them about a simple question, How's your sleep?
Do you feel like you get enough hours of sleep each night?
I knew that his answer was not going to be right because
sleep definitely can be hard to get.
He answered me with an exhausted face.
Not much, maybe 4 or 5 hours on average, he said, I knew
that was a problem, and I ordered some labs, advised him on
a potential treatment plan and we scheduled a follow-up.
One of the labs that I ordered was to check his level of
free fatty acids.
Now, free fatty acids are essentially the major fuel for
your body.
You're probably wondering, how is this connected to sleep
and diabetes, right?
Well, substances like free fatty acids interfere with the
ability of insulin to regulate blood sugar levels.
Studies also show that lack of sleep increases free fatty
acid levels in the blood.
So according to a study, as long as free fatty acid levels
in the blood remained high, the ability of insulin to regulate
blood sugar levels were impaired.
To conduct the study, they used healthy individuals and they
divided into groups, who got a full night sleep, as well as
a group who only got 4 hours of sleep.
And the study proved just this.
The participants who were not getting enough sleep had high
levels of free fatty acids and the ability of insulin to
regulate blood sugar levels for those individuals was impaired.
The study was great.
It was the evidence that lack of sleep caused insulin to
do its job less effectively.
The insulin action in these healthy young individuals resembled
what you would typically see in early stages of diabetes.
Can you believe that?
It also provides evidence that lack of sleep disrupts fat
metabolism which suggests that increasing your amount of sleep
may reduce rates of obesity and diabetes.
Sometimes we take sleep for granted, guys, we have insomnia.
You may have a crying baby, just like mine or you work all
hours that interfere with your sleep.
But sleep is crucial because it allows, insulin to do what?
To do its job better.
If you want to know, this particular patient's free
petty acids were screamingly high.
We work together to come up with a plan and began to get
more sleep at night.
So we did a follow-up, as I said, and the blood work showed a significant
improvement in his free fatty acids.
And he also showed a substantial improvement in regards to
his insulin resistance.
He was able to cut back on a lot of medications.
The bottom line, guys, get more sleep, at least try to.
If you're having trouble sleeping, talk to your doctor.
Get a plan.
Follow the sleep hygiene rules.
Because losing sleep causes so much more than feeling tired the next day.
Anyway, I hope you learned something from me today,
guys, share this patient experience with the people you may know.
And if you liked this video, please give a thumbs up,
share and remember to subscribe.
See you in the next video.
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