If I’m diagnosed with one cancer, am I likely to get another?

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Receiving a cancer diagnosis is life-changing and can cause a range of concerns about ongoing health.

Fear of cancer returning is one of the top health concerns. And managing this fear is an important part of cancer treatment.

But how likely is it to get cancer for a second time?

Why can cancer return?

While initial cancer treatment may seem successful, sometimes a few cancer cells remain dormant. Over time, these cancer cells can grow again and may start to cause symptoms.

This is known as cancer recurrence: when a cancer returns after a period of remission. This period could be days, months or even years. The new cancer is the same type as the original cancer, but can sometimes grow in a new location through a process called metastasis.

Actor Hugh Jackman has gone public about his multiple diagnoses of basal cell carcinoma (a type of skin cancer) over the past decade.

The exact reason why cancer returns differs depending on the cancer type and the treatment received. Research is ongoing to identify genes associated with cancers returning. This may eventually allow doctors to tailor treatments for high-risk people.

What are the chances of cancer returning?

The risk of cancer returning differs between cancers, and between sub-types of the same cancer.

New screening and treatment options have seen reductions in recurrence rates for many types of cancer. For example, between 2004 and 2019, the risk of colon cancer recurring dropped by 31-68%. It is important to remember that only someone’s treatment team can assess an individual’s personal risk of cancer returning.

For most types of cancer, the highest risk of cancer returning is within the first three years after entering remission. This is because any leftover cancer cells not killed by treatment are likely to start growing again sooner rather than later. Three years after entering remission, recurrence rates for most cancers decrease, meaning that every day that passes lowers the risk of the cancer returning.

Every day that passes also increases the numbers of new discoveries, and cancer drugs being developed.

What about second, unrelated cancers?

Earlier this year, we learned Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, had been diagnosed with malignant melanoma (a type of skin cancer) shortly after being treated for breast cancer.

Although details have not been confirmed, this is likely a new cancer that isn’t a recurrence or metastasis of the first one.

Australian research from Queensland and Tasmania shows adults who have had cancer have around a 6-36% higher risk of developing a second primary cancer compared to the risk of cancer in the general population.

Who’s at risk of another, unrelated cancer?

With improvements in cancer diagnosis and treatment, people diagnosed with cancer are living longer than ever. This means they need to consider their long-term health, including their risk of developing another unrelated cancer.

Reasons for such cancers include different types of cancers sharing the same kind of lifestyle, environmental and genetic risk factors.

The increased risk is also likely partly due to the effects that some cancer treatments and imaging procedures have on the body. However, this increased risk is relatively small when compared with the (sometimes lifesaving) benefits of these treatment and procedures.

While a 6-36% greater chance of getting a second, unrelated cancer may seem large, only around 10-12% of participants developed a second cancer in the Australian studies we mentioned. Both had a median follow-up time of around five years.

Similarly, in a large US study only about one in 12 adult cancer patients developed a second type of cancer in the follow-up period (an average of seven years).

The kind of first cancer you had also affects your risk of a second, unrelated cancer, as well as the type of second cancer you are at risk of. For example, in the two Australian studies we mentioned, the risk of a second cancer was greater for people with an initial diagnosis of head and neck cancer, or a haematological (blood) cancer.

People diagnosed with cancer as a child, adolescent or young adult also have a greater risk of a second, unrelated cancer.

What can I do to lower my risk?

Regular follow-up examinations can give peace of mind, and ensure any subsequent cancer is caught early, when there’s the best chance of successful treatment.

Maintenance therapy may be used to reduce the risk of some types of cancer returning. However, despite ongoing research, there are no specific treatments against cancer recurrence or developing a second, unrelated cancer.

But there are things you can do to help lower your general risk of cancer – not smoking, being physically active, eating well, maintaining a healthy body weight, limiting alcohol intake and being sun safe. These all reduce the chance of cancer returning and getting a second cancer.

Sarah Diepstraten, Senior Research Officer, Blood Cells and Blood Cancer Division, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute and Terry Boyle, Senior Lecturer in Cancer Epidemiology, University of South Australia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • Where Nutrition Meets Habits!

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    Where Nutrition Meets Habits…

    This is Claudia Canu, MSc., INESEM. She’s on a mission to change the way we eat:

    Often, diet is a case of…

    • Healthy
    • Easy
    • Cheap

    (choose two)

    She wants to make it all three, and tasty too. She has her work cut out for her, but she’s already blazed quite a trail personally:

    Nine months before turning 40 years old, I set a challenge for myself: Arrive to the day I turn 40 as the best possible version of myself, physically, mentally and emotionally.❞

    ~ Claudia Canu

    In Her Own Words: My Journey To My Healthy 40s

    And it really was quite a journey:

    For those of us who’d like the short-cut rather than a nine-month quasi-spiritual journey… based on both her experience, and her academic and professional background in nutrition, her main priorities that she settled on were:

    • Making meals actually nutritionally balanced, which meant re-thinking what she thought a meal “should” be
    • Making nutritionally balanced meals that didn’t require a lot of skill and/or resources
    • That’s it!

    But, easier said than done… Where to begin?

    She shares an extensive list of recipes, from meals to snacks (I thought I was the only one who made coffee overnight oats!), but the most important thing from her is:

    Claudia’s 10 Guiding Principles:

    1. Buy only fresh ingredients that you are going to cook yourself. If you decide to buy pre-cooked ones, make sure they do not have added ingredients, especially sugar (in all its forms).
    2. Use easy and simple cooking methods.
    3. Change ingredients every time you prepare your meals.
    4. Prepare large quantities for three or four days.
    5. Store the food separately in tightly closed Tupperware.
    6. Organize yourself to always have ready-to-eat food in the fridge.
    7. When hungry, mix the ingredients in the ideal amounts to cover the needs of your body.
    8. Chew well and take the time to taste your food.
    9. Eat foods that you like and enjoy.
    10. Do not overeat but don’t undereat either.

    We have only two quibbles with this fine list, which are:

    About Ingredients!

    Depending on what’s available around you, frozen and/or tinned “one-ingredient” foods can be as nutritional as (if not more nutritional than) fresh ones. By “one-ingredient” foods here we mean that if you buy a frozen pack of chopped onions, the ingredients list will be: “chopped onions”. If you buy a tin of tomatoes, the ingredients will say “Tomatoes” or at most “Tomatoes, Tomato Juice”, for example.

    She does list the ingredients she keeps in; the idea that with these in the kitchen, you’ll never be in the position of “oh, we don’t have much in, I guess it’s a pizza delivery night” or “well there are some chicken nuggets at the back of the freezer”.

    Check Out And Plan: 10 Types Of Ingredients You Should Always Keep In Your Kitchen

    Here Today, Gone Tomorrow?

    Preparing large quantities for three or four days can result in food for one or two days if the food is unduly delicious

    But! Claudia has a remedy for that:

    Read: How To Eliminate Food Cravings And What To Do When They Win

    Anyway, there’s a wealth of resources in the above-linked pages, so do check them out!

    Perhaps the biggest take-away is to ask yourself:

    “What are my guiding principles when it comes to food?”

    If you don’t have a ready answer, maybe it’s time to tackle that—whether Claudia’s way or your own!

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  • 7-Minute Face Fitness For Lymphatic Drainage & Youthful Jawline

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    Valeriia Veksler is a registered nurse with a background in cosmetic medicine. She’s been practicing for 7 years, and on the strength of that, is going to teach us how to give our face some love for 7 minutes:

    The routine, step by step

    Preparation: clean your face and apply your usual moisturizer. Breathe deeply: Inhale through the nose, exhale to release tension.

    Neck massage: use fingertips in circular motion from the bottom of the neck to the hairline and back for 30 seconds. This helps promote blood flow to the face.

    Sternocleidomastoid massage: use knuckles to massage in circles from the sternal area up to the jawline and down to the collarbone for 30 seconds. Keep posture straight, shoulders down, and relax muscles.

    Collarbone pressure: apply and release pressure with fingertips above the collarbones for 30 seconds. This stimulates lymphatic flow and helps reduce puffiness.

    Under-chin massage: use knuckles to massage side-to-side under the chin for 30 seconds. Relax the under-chin area and promote lymphatic drainage.

    Jawline massage: with knuckles, massage from the chin towards the ears in circular motion for 30 seconds. Relax the jaw.

    Nasolabial fold and nose massage: place index fingers near nostrils and move mouth in a “O” shape, then massage around the nostrils and up the nose for 30 seconds.

    Smile line lift: press palms on the smile lines and slide hands up towards the temples for 30 seconds. This helps lift the face and sculpt cheekbones.

    Under-eye massage: use index fingers in a hook shape, massaging under the eyes along the bone structure for 30 seconds. This promotes blood flow and lymphatic drainage.

    Temple lift: use fingertips to lift the area near the left temple for 30 seconds, then assist with the opposite hand to lift further. Repeat on the other side. This reduces crow’s feet and lifts the corners of the eyes.

    Forehead lift: place hands on the forehead, lock fingers, and gently elevate the skin upwards. Glide fingers towards the hairline for 30 seconds. This promotes blood flow and smooths the forehead.

    Relax 11 Lines: place fingers at the center of the forehead, gently press into the tissue, and let them glide away from each other towards the eyebrows for 30 seconds.

    Bonus:

    • Ensure good posture throughout.
    • Relax, stay mindful, and breathe deeply during the exercises.
    • Feel the warmth and energy from improved circulation, after the routine.

    For more on all of this plus a visual demonstration of everything, enjoy:

    Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like to read:

    Top 10 Foods That Promote Lymphatic Drainage and Lymph Flow

    Take care!

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  • The 7 Approaches To Pain Management

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    More Than One Way To Kill Pain

    This is Dr. Deepak Ravindran (MD, FRCA. FFPMRCA, EDRA. FIPP, DMSMed). He has decades of experience and is a specialist in acute and chronic pain management, anesthesia, musculoskeletal medicine, and lifestyle medicine.

    A quick catch-up, first:

    We’ve written about chronic pain management before:

    Managing Chronic Pain (Realistically!)

    As well as:

    Science-Based Alternative Pain Relief

    Dr. Ravindran’s approach

    Dr. Ravindran takes a “trauma-informed care” approach to his professional practice, and recommends the same for others.

    In a nutshell, this means starting from a position of not “what’s wrong with you?”, but rather “what happened to you?”.

    This seemingly subtle shift is important, because it means actually dealing with a person’s issues, instead of “take one of these and call my secretary next month”. Read more:

    What is Trauma-Informed Care?

    Pain itself can be something of a many-headed hydra. Dr. Ravindran’s approach is equally many-headed; specifically, he has a 7-point plan:

    Medications

    Dr. Ravindran sees painkillers (and a collection of other drugs, like antidepressants and muscle relaxants) as a potential means to an end worth exploring, but he doesn’t expect them to be the best choice for everyone, and nor does he expect them to be a cure-all. Neither should we. He also advises being mindful of the drawbacks and potential complications of these drugs, too.

    Interventions

    Sometimes, surgery is the right choice. Sometimes it isn’t. Often, it will change a life—one way or the other. Similar to with medications, Dr. Ravindran is very averse to a “one size fits all” approach here. See also:

    The Insider’s Guide To Making Hospital As Comfortable As Possible

    Neuroscience and stress management

    Often a lot of the distress of pain is not just the pain itself, but the fear associated with it. Will it get worse if I move wrong or eat the wrong thing? How long will it last? Will it ever get better? Will it get worse if I do nothing?. Dr. Ravindran advises tackling this, with the same level of importance as the pain itself. Here’s a good start:

    Stress, And Building Psychological Resilience

    Diet and the microbiome

    Many chronic illnesses are heavily influenced by this, and Dr. Ravindran’s respect for lifestyle medicine comes into play here. While diet might not fix all our ills, it certainly can stop things from being a lot worse. Beyond the obvious “eat healthily” (Mediterranean diet being a good starting point for most people), he also advises doing elimination tests where appropriate, to screen out potential flare-up triggers. You also might consider:

    Four Ways To Upgrade The Mediterranean Diet

    Sleep

    “Get good sleep” is easy advice for those who are not in agonizing pain that sometimes gets worse from staying in the same position for too long. Nevertheless, it is important, and foundational to good health. So it’s important to explore—whatever limitations one might realistically have—what can be done to improve it.

    If you can only sleep for a short while at a time, you may get benefit from this previous main feature of ours:

    How To Nap Like A Pro (No More “Sleep Hangovers”!)

    Exercise and movement

    The trick here is to move little and often; without overdoing it, but without permitting loss of mobility either. See also:

    The Doctor Who Wants Us To Exercise Less, And Move More

    Therapies of the mind and body

    This is about taking a holistic approach to one’s wellness. In Dr. Ravindran’s words:

    ❝Mind-body therapies are often an extremely sensitive topic about which people hold very strong opinions and sometimes irrational beliefs.

    Some, like reiki and spiritual therapy and homeopathy, have hardly any scientific evidence to back them up, while others like yoga, hypnosis, and meditation/mindfulness are mainstream techniques with many studies showing the benefits, but they all work for certain patients.❞

    In other words: evidence-based is surely the best starting point, but if you feel inclined to try something else and it works for you, then it works for you. And that’s a win.

    Want to know more?

    You might like his book…

    The Pain-Free Mindset: 7 Steps to Taking Control and Overcoming Chronic Pain

    He also has a blog and a podcast.

    Take care!

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  • The Stress Prescription (Against Aging!)

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    The Stress Prescription (Against Aging!)

    This is Dr. Elissa Epel, whose work has for the past 20 years specialized in the effect of stress on aging. She’s led groundbreaking research on cortisol, telomeres, and telomerase, all in the context of aging, especially in women, as well as the relationship between stress and weight gain. She was elected member of the National Academy of Medicine for her work on stress pathways, and has been recognized as a key “Influencer in Aging” by the Alliance for Aging Research.

    Indeed, she’s also been named in the top 0.1% of researchers globally, in terms of publication impact.

    What’s that about stress and aging?

    In her words,

    ❝Women with the highest levels of perceived stress have telomeres shorter on average by the equivalent of at least one decade of additional aging compared to low stress women❞

    Source: Accelerated telomere shortening in response to life stress

    We say “in her words”, as she is the top-listed author on this paper—an honour reserved for the lead researcher of any given study/paper.

    However, we’d be remiss not to note that the second-listed author is Nobel Prize Laureate Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn. What a team! Maybe we’ll do a spotlight feature on Dr. Blackburn’s work one of these days, but for now, back to Dr. Epel…

    What does she want us to do about it?

    She has the following advice for us:

    Let go of what we can’t control

    This one is simple enough, and can be as simple as learning how to set anxiety aside, and taking up the practice of radical acceptance of what we cannot control.

    Be challenged, not afraid

    This is about eustress, and being the lion, not the gazelle. Dr. Epel uses the example of how when lions are hunting gazelles, both are stressed, but both are feeling the physiological effects of that stress in terms of the augmentation to their immediate abilities, but only one of them is suffering by it.

    We’ll let her explain how to leverage this:

    TED ideas | Here’s how you can handle stress like a lion, not a gazelle | Dr. Elissa Epel

    Build resilience through controlled discomfort

    Don’t worry, you don’t have to get chased by lions. A cold shower will do it! This is about making use of hormesis, the body’s ability to build resilience to stressors by small doses of controlled cortisol release—as for example when one undergoes thermal shock, which sounds drastic, but for most people, a cold shower (or even an ice bath) is safe enough.

    You can read more about this here:

    A Cold Shower A Day Keeps The Doctor Away

    Connect with nature

    You don’t have to hug a tree, but you do have get to a natural (or at least, natural-seeming) environment once in a while. Simply put, we did not evolve to be in the urban or even suburban settings where most of us spend most of our time. Getting to be around greenery with at least some kind of regularity is hugely beneficial. It doesn’t have to be a national park; a nice garden or local park can suffice, and potted plants at home are better than nothing. Even spending time in virtual reality “nature” is an option:

    Effect of Virtual Reality on Stress Reduction and Change of Physiological Parameters Including Heart Rate Variability in People With High Stress: An Open Randomized Crossover Trial

    (you can see an example there, of the kind of scenery this study used)

    Breathe deeply, and rest deeply

    Mindful breathing, and good quality sleep, are very strongly evidence-based approaches to reduce stress, for example:

    Practice gratitude to build optimism

    Optimism has a huge positive impact on health outcomes, even when other factors (including socioeconomic factors, pre-existing conditions, and general reasons for one person to be more optimistic than another) are controlled for.

    Read: Optimism and Cause-Specific Mortality: A Prospective Cohort Study

    There are various ways to increase optimism, and practising gratitude is one of them—but that doesn’t necessarily mean abandoning realism, either:

    How To Practise (Non-Toxic) Positivity

    There are other ways too, though, and Dr. Epel discusses some with her friend and colleague, Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, here:

    TED ideas | Could your thoughts make you age faster? And can we reverse that? | Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn & Dr. Elissa Epel

    Want to learn more from Dr. Epel?

    We reviewed one of her books, The Telomere Effect, previously. It’s about what we can do to lengthen our telomeres (a key factor in health aging; effectively, being biologically younger). You also might enjoy her newer book, The Stress Prescription, as well as her blog.

    Enjoy!

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  • Most People Who Start GLP-1 RAs Quit Them Within A Year (Here’s Why)

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    Specifically, 54% quit within one year, with that number rising to 72% within two years.

    We first wrote about GLP-1 receptor agonists (i.e. semaglutide drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy) a couple of years ago when popularity was just beginning to take off:

    Semaglutide for Weight Loss?

    However, as we had room only to touch briefly on the side effects and what happens when you stop taking it, you might also want to check out:

    What happens when I stop taking a drug like Ozempic or Mounjaro?

    …and:

    Considering taking Wegovy to lose weight? Here are the risks and benefits – and how it differs from Ozempic

    Notwithstanding all this information, there’s a lot of science that has still yet to be done. If you’re a regular 10almonds reader, you’ll be familiar with our research review articles—this one was more of a non-research review, i.e. looking at the great absence of evidence in certain areas, and the many cases of research simply not asking the right questions, for example:

    Of the four studies that actually looked at the macros (unlike most studies), they found that on average, protein intake decreased by 17.1%. Which is a big deal!

    It’s an especially big deal, because while protein’s obviously important for everyone, it’s especially important for anyone trying to lose weight, because muscle mass is a major factor in metabolic base rate—which in turn is much important for fat loss/maintenance than exercise, when it comes to how many calories we burn by simply existing.

    A reasonable hypothesis, therefore, is that one of the numerous reasons people who quit GLP-1 agonists immediately put fat back on, is because they probably lost muscle mass in amongst their weight loss, meaning that their metabolic base rate will have decreased, meaning that they end up more disposed to put on fat than before.❞

    Read in full: Semaglutide’s Surprisingly Unexamined Effects ← there are a lot more (equally concerning) items discussed in this article

    Why people quit GLP-1 RAs

    There was a large (n=125,474) study of US adults. The average age was about 54 years, and about 65% were female.

    From the total data pool (i.e. not narrowing it down by demographic), 54% stopped within a year, and 72% within two years.

    The factors most associated with discontinuation were:

    • age above 65 years
    • not having type 2 diabetes

    The main reasons given for discontinuation were:

    • High costs: self-explanatory, but it’s worth noting that people who stopped for this reason were more likely to restart later.
    • Adverse side effects: the most common ones were nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, constipation, stomach pain, and loss of appetite. Rarer, but more seriously, side effects included: pancreatitis (severe abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting), gallbladder issues (gallstones, cholecystitis), kidney problems, severe allergic reactions (rash, swelling, difficulty breathing), hypoglycemia, especially if taken with insulin or other diabetes medications, changes in vision (worsening diabetic retinopathy), and an increased heart rate.
    • Disappointingly little weight loss: the researchers noted that GLP-1 RA results are “heterogenous”, meaning, they differ a lot. For those for whom it didn’t work, quitting was more likely, for obvious reasons. See also: 10 Mistakes To Sabotage Your Ozempic Progress
    • Successful weight loss: while it is widely known that if one stops taking GLP-1 RAs, weight regain is the usual next thing to happen, there are a lot of people who go onto GLP-1 RAs with the rationale “I’ll just use this to lose the weight, and then I’ll keep the weight off with my diet and lifestyle”. Which sounds reasonable, but because of the specific mechanisms of actions of GLP-1 RAs, it simply doesn’t work that way (and, as we mentioned above, there are reasons that you may, after stopping taking GLP-1 RAs, be more disposed to put weight on than you were before you started). So, by the best of current science (which admittedly is not amazing when it comes to this topic), it does seem that taking GLP-1 RAs is a lifetime commitment.

    You can read the study itself here:

    Discontinuation and Reinitiation of Dual-Labeled GLP-1 Receptor Agonists Among US Adults With Overweight or Obesity

    Want to get similar results, without GLP-1 RAs?

    Then check out:

    5 Ways To Naturally Boost The “Ozempic Effect” ← this is about natural ways of doing similar hormone-hacking to what GLP-1 RAs do

    and

    Ozempic vs Five Natural Supplements ← this is about metabolism-tweaking supplements

    and

    Hack Your Hunger ← this is about appetite management

    Take care!

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  • Could not getting enough sleep increase your risk of type 2 diabetes?

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    Not getting enough sleep is a common affliction in the modern age. If you don’t always get as many hours of shut-eye as you’d like, perhaps you were concerned by news of a recent study that found people who sleep less than six hours a night are at higher risk of type 2 diabetes.

    So what can we make of these findings? It turns out the relationship between sleep and diabetes is complex.

    The study

    Researchers analysed data from the UK Biobank, a large biomedical database which serves as a global resource for health and medical research. They looked at information from 247,867 adults, following their health outcomes for more than a decade.

    The researchers wanted to understand the associations between sleep duration and type 2 diabetes, and whether a healthy diet reduced the effects of short sleep on diabetes risk.

    As part of their involvement in the UK Biobank, participants had been asked roughly how much sleep they get in 24 hours. Seven to eight hours was the average and considered normal sleep. Short sleep duration was broken up into three categories: mild (six hours), moderate (five hours) and extreme (three to four hours). The researchers analysed sleep data alongside information about people’s diets.

    Some 3.2% of participants were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes during the follow-up period. Although healthy eating habits were associated with a lower overall risk of diabetes, when people ate healthily but slept less than six hours a day, their risk of type 2 diabetes increased compared to people in the normal sleep category.

    The researchers found sleep duration of five hours was linked with a 16% higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes, while the risk for people who slept three to four hours was 41% higher, compared to people who slept seven to eight hours.

    One limitation is the study defined a healthy diet based on the number of servings of fruit, vegetables, red meat and fish a person consumed over a day or a week. In doing so, it didn’t consider how dietary patterns such as time-restricted eating or the Mediterranean diet may modify the risk of diabetes among those who slept less.

    Also, information on participants’ sleep quantity and diet was only captured at recruitment and may have changed over the course of the study. The authors acknowledge these limitations.

    Why might short sleep increase diabetes risk?

    In people with type 2 diabetes, the body becomes resistant to the effects of a hormone called insulin, and slowly loses the capacity to produce enough of it in the pancreas. Insulin is important because it regulates glucose (sugar) in our blood that comes from the food we eat by helping move it to cells throughout the body.

    We don’t know the precise reasons why people who sleep less may be at higher risk of type 2 diabetes. But previous research has shown sleep-deprived people often have increased inflammatory markers and free fatty acids in their blood, which impair insulin sensitivity, leading to insulin resistance. This means the body struggles to use insulin properly to regulate blood glucose levels, and therefore increases the risk of type 2 diabetes.

    Further, people who don’t sleep enough, as well as people who sleep in irregular patterns (such as shift workers), experience disruptions to their body’s natural rhythm, known as the circadian rhythm.

    This can interfere with the release of hormones like cortisol, glucagon and growth hormones. These hormones are released through the day to meet the body’s changing energy needs, and normally keep blood glucose levels nicely balanced. If they’re compromised, this may reduce the body’s ability to handle glucose as the day progresses.

    These factors, and others, may contribute to the increased risk of type 2 diabetes seen among people sleeping less than six hours.

    A man checking the glucose monitor on his arm.
    Millions of people around the world have diabetes. WESTOCK PRODUCTIONS/Shutterstock

    While this study primarily focused on people who sleep eight hours or less, it’s possible longer sleepers may also face an increased risk of type 2 diabetes.

    Research has previously shown a U-shaped correlation between sleep duration and type 2 diabetes risk. A review of multiple studies found getting between seven to eight hours of sleep daily was associated with the lowest risk. When people got less than seven hours sleep, or more than eight hours, the risk began to increase.

    The reason sleeping longer is associated with increased risk of type 2 diabetes may be linked to weight gain, which is also correlated with longer sleep. Likewise, people who don’t sleep enough are more likely to be overweight or obese.

    Good sleep, healthy diet

    Getting enough sleep is an important part of a healthy lifestyle and may reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes.

    Based on this study and other evidence, it seems that when it comes to diabetes risk, seven to eight hours of sleep may be the sweet spot. However, other factors could influence the relationship between sleep duration and diabetes risk, such as individual differences in sleep quality and lifestyle.

    While this study’s findings question whether a healthy diet can mitigate the effects of a lack of sleep on diabetes risk, a wide range of evidence points to the benefits of healthy eating for overall health.

    The authors of the study acknowledge it’s not always possible to get enough sleep, and suggest doing high-intensity interval exercise during the day may offset some of the potential effects of short sleep on diabetes risk.

    In fact, exercise at any intensity can improve blood glucose levels.

    Giuliana Murfet, Casual Academic, Faculty of Health, University of Technology Sydney and ShanShan Lin, Senior Lecturer, School of Public Health, University of Technology Sydney

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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    Learn to Age Gracefully

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