Key Points
Night owls -- a person who is habitually active or wakeful at night -- tend to have a higher body mass index (BMI), larger waists, and more hidden body fat and thus are almost 50 per cent more likely to develop type 2 diabetes (T2D) than those who go to bed earlier, shows new research on Monday.. Previous studies have indicated that late chronotype -- people who prefer to go to bed late and wake up late -- live an unhealthy lifestyle, and are at higher risk of obesity and metabolic disorders including type 2 diabetes...
The new study showed that a late chronotype had a 46 per cent higher risk of developing diabetes, which suggests that the increased risk of T2D can't be explained by lifestyle alone...
To explore, the team studied the association between sleep timing, diabetes, and body fat distribution in more than 5,000 individuals who were divided into three groups: early chronotype (20 per cent), late chronotype (20 per cent), and intermediate chronotype (60 per cent)...
Late chronotypes were found to be at higher risk of developing diabetes, had a 0.7 kg/m2 higher BMI, 1.9 cm larger waist circumference, 7 cm2 more visceral fat, and 14 per cent higher liver fat content, compared with those with an intermediate chronotype...
More visceral fat and liver fat were responsible for making people with a late chronotype to be at greater risk of developing type 2 diabetes, van der Velde said...
