By Aida Velazquez-Santiago

For a college student, juggling both extracurricular activities and having a social life can lead to all-nighters and late night snacking, which has been found to be a growing factor in the development of diabetes. According to scientists, constantly sacrificing sleep can actually result in leading an unhealthy lifestyle, including overeating and developing the risk of becoming diabetic.

“Lack of sleep can lead to overeating and this does increase the chances of diabetes,” said Michelle Jacobs, an assistant clinical professor at Bouvé College of Health Sciences.

When college students stay up until all hours of the night, the obvious sidekick to insomnia will be stress.

“Indirectly, a lack of sleep will probably increase stress,” Jacobs said. “Stress causes cells to be resistant when processing blood sugar, therefore the sugar stays longer in the blood.”

Being a Type 2 diabetic means the body doesn’t know how to handle the insulin it produces, while Type 1 diabetes means the body produces no insulin at all. Sleep relieves stress which causes the body to get rid of sugar faster. Stress and college can go hand in hand, making sleep that much more important, especially in collegiate years.

A healthy routine is necessary to develop early in young adult life, more specifically, in college.

“When in college you develop lifestyle habits,” Jacobs said. “If those include excessive eating and a sedentary-type lifestyle, you are developing risk factors for Type 2 diabetes.”

Yet leading a healthy lifestyle does not necessarily mean getting eight hours of sleep every night. People can still lead healthy lifestyles if they partake in healthy activities when they are awake. Since sleep affects eating habits as well as activity levels during waking hours, though, the effectiveness of leading a healthy lifestyle may be easier to attain with more hours of sleep per night.

“Adequate sleep leads to better weight management,” Jacobs said. “You have to allow your body to refresh in order to have a clear mind and good health.”

The amount of sleep necessary for each person varies, and to answer the question of how much sleep one should get every night, one must first figure out how much sleep the body requires in order to lead an active lifestyle.

“I get around five to six hours of sleep a night,” said Shalini Gloklani, a sophomore biology major. “I know sleep affects weight; the less you sleep the more you weigh. Lack of sleep also causes a lot of other things like headaches and premature aging. Plus, obviously, you are tired.”

Jacobs said sleepless nights can lead to less productive days because it influences leading a healthy lifestyle.

“The amount of sleep required to maintain a healthy lifestyle varies with the individual, but seven and a half to nine hours of sleep is the standard amount [recommended] for an adult,” Jacobs said.

Many students focus more on things causing stress rather than sleep, says Sindy Mei, a sophomore business major.

“I sleep around four to five hours per night,” said Mei. “I know that eight hours is the suggested amount of sleep to be healthy.”

Peter Doyle, Medical Director of University Health and Counseling Services (UHCS) said that students run into the issue of neglecting healthy sleeping habits depending on stress level. High stress levels can lead the body to be fooled into thinking it is not producing enough blood sugar.

“The body interprets only sleeping three to four hours of sleep per night almost as if you were in a period of stress. The body releases stress hormones, raising blood sugar, and from that perspective, lack of sleep could be interpreted as causing diabetes,” said Doyle. Doyle said that when blood sugar is raised due to the body’s reaction to stress, diabetes is a likely outcome.

But it is possible to counteract the negative effects that come with the occasional sleepless night.

“If you have a large sleep debt you have to reset your clock,” Doyle said. “In the morning walk outside and get around 30 minutes of bright sunshine, that will reset your rhythm.”