‘Lack of sleep can cause heart attack’
It’s high time to see a doctor if you are having sleep problems, for a new study says that lack of shut-eye could significantly raise your risk of developing diabetes and heart disease. A team, led by Imperial College London, has found that not only inadequate sleep raises one’s heart disease risk, but one can develop the symptoms of diabetes after just three days of disrupted sleep.
This is probably because of a faulty protein, known as MT2, which disrupts the link between 24 hour, or circadian, rhythms and release of hormone insulin — leading to abnormal control of blood sugar and hence type 2 diabetes, it says. Researchers have based their findings on an analysis of 20,000 volunteers who were recruited for the study.
The findings, published in the Nature Genetics journal, revealed that those with any of four particular variants of the gene were at much greater risk, which the researchers say may pave the way for personalised treatment for the condition. “Blood sugar control is one of the many processes regulated by the body’s biological clock. This study adds to our understanding of how the gene that carries the blueprint for a key component in the clock can influence diabetes risk.
“We found very rare variants of the MT2 gene that’ve much larger effect than more common variants discovered before. Although each mutation is rare, they are common in the sense that everyone has a lot of very rare mutations in their DNA.
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