Effects of night-to-night variations in sleep on blood glucose in university students

There is much evidence that poor sleep increases the risk of diabetes mellitus. Part of the difficulty persuading young people to sleep better is their subjective sense of invulnerability to unhealthy sleep. This feeling is not totally unfounded as we found that university undergraduates to have normal nocturnal and daytime glucose profiles as well as normal insulin responses to glucose challenge despite sleeping an average of ~6hrs a night i.e. below what is recommended.