Diabetes Insomnia Treatment: How to Manage Sleep Disturbances with Diabetes

Diabetes insomnia is a challenging and often overlooked issue faced by many individuals. If you’re living with diabetes, there’s a high chance that sleep disturbances like insomnia are making it harder to control your condition. Both problems feed off each other, creating a cycle that can severely impact your physical and mental well-being. Fortunately, by understanding the link between poor sleep and blood sugar fluctuations, you can begin to take practical steps toward managing both.

Learn how to manage sleep disturbances associated with diabetes in this article. For professional support, visit the best Mental Health Clinic in Brooklyn at Doral Health & Wellness, or log on to Bariatric – Doral Health & Wellness NY for a consultation.

Experts continue to study the connection between sleep and blood sugar levels. A consistent pattern has emerged: poor or insufficient sleep disrupts various physiological processes that regulate glucose and insulin sensitivity. Here’s how:

• Increased Cortisol: When you don’t sleep well, your body goes into stress mode, releasing cortisol — a hormone that raises blood glucose levels by impairing insulin’s effectiveness.
• Circadian Rhythm Disruption: Your sleep timing matters. Irregular sleep patterns can disrupt insulin and cortisol cycles, further destabilizing blood sugar.
• Growth Hormone Influence: Growth hormone levels fluctuate during sleep. When elevated abnormally, it can contribute to higher glucose levels.
• Oxidative Stress and Inflammation: Lack of sleep triggers oxidative stress and inflammation, which are known to worsen insulin resistance and increase glucose.
• Elevated C-Reactive Protein: This inflammatory marker rises during sleep deprivation and is linked to poor glycemic control.
• Increased IL-6 and TNF-alpha: These cytokines are elevated when you don’t get enough rest, leading to chronic inflammation and insulin resistance — both of which spike blood sugar levels.

How does diabetes affect your sleep?

Diabetes doesn’t directly impact your sleep, but the symptoms you experience and how you manage them do impact your sleep. Certain symptoms may cause problems with your sleep, including:

• Frequent urination: If your blood sugar is high, especially at night, you may experience frequent urination, which disrupts your sleep.
• Dehydration: When your body has extra glucose, it takes water from your tissues, which makes you dehydrated. This can disrupt your sleep and make you get up to drink water.
• Shakiness, dizziness, and sweating: These symptoms indicate low sugar levels, which impact your sleep.

In one scientific review, experts analyzed 97 studies on improper sleep and diabetes, mainly on type 2 diabetes. They found that the relationship between diabetes and sleep is bi-directional, which means well-managed diabetes may improve your sleep quality, whereas improper sleep affects diabetes management. Similarly, a study of people with type 2 diabetes shows that people with high blood sugar levels experience poor sleep. Another study found that 62% of people with high glucose levels in the pre-diabetes stage experienced poor sleep, compared to 46% of people with normal glucose levels. Experts are clear that sleep and diabetes are connected, but more studies are needed to understand how increased blood sugar is linked with poor sleep.

How diabetes technology can improve sleep quality

Diabetes technology can improve your sleep quality by helping manage your blood sugar levels:

1. Hybrid closed-loop systems: It is also known as an artificial pancreas, which is designed to keep blood sugar levels stable throughout the day and night, and it can lower how many dips in blood sugar you experience while living with type 1 diabetes. If your child is living with diabetes, then it will be beneficial because research has shown that when this system was tested in children, 9 out of 10 parents reported that their child sleeps with less trouble.
2. Continuous glucose monitors (CGMs): Flash glucose monitors and continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) are devices that alert people on their smartphones when their blood sugar levels get too high or too low. This is useful during the night for diabetic people to see whether their blood sugar levels drop or rise. These devices make it easier to test your blood sugar levels during the night rather than testing with less accurate methods (like devices that use an external sensor or compared to finger-prick testing).
3. Sleep trackers: To understand your sleep pattern, it is best to track it. Wearable sleep trackers can provide you with insights into your sleep habits and patterns, along with health metrics and tips to improve your sleep.

6 Tips to Improve Diabetes Insomnia

These tips will help you to sleep better with diabetes:

1. Prioritize blood sugar management: Managing blood sugar is crucial for a good night’s sleep. Whether your blood sugar levels go too low or too high, it can disrupt your sleep. So, to make sure you keep your blood sugar in the targeted range, follow the instructions that your diabetes doctor gives you based on a personalized treatment plan, which includes your personal diet, activity, medication, and monitoring important markers. Make sure you monitor your glucose levels frequently as recommended throughout the day.

• Practice good sleep hygiene: Most adults need at least 7 to 9 hours of sleep at night. However, many people don’t allow themselves to get enough sleep. However, it becomes more important if you have diabetes, because it impacts your diabetes management and leads to severe complications. So, make sure you get enough sleep at night. To do that, you can improve your sleep hygiene by avoiding electronic devices that emit blue light at least 1 hour before sleep, creating a dark sleeping environment, investing in a good pillow and mattress, which helps you improve your sleep quality at night.
• Create white noise: Although the sound of waking up by hearing the sound of birds chirping in the morning feels good, it can disrupt your sleeping patterns. The sound of garbage collectors, street sweepers, and people leaving for early-morning jobs impacts your sleep. So, if your sleep gets disrupted by these sounds, you can try a noise machine or search for a mobile app that offers a variety of nighttime soundtracks that help to avoid these distracting sounds.
• Avoid alcohol and other stimulants at night: Avoid drinking alcohol or caffeinated beverages because they affect blood sugar levels. Alcohol can impair the release of glucose into the bloodstream, and it takes two hours for your body to completely metabolize the alcohol you consume. If you want to drink, make sure you consume them in moderation, especially before late evening, because it can impact your sleep.
• Exercise during the day: To sleep better at night, you need to do some physical activity during the day. Even if you do only 10 minutes of aerobic exercise, it is beneficial. This is because exercise increases internal body temperature, and later in the day, it drops back down to normal, which triggers a feeling of drowsiness, which helps you to sleep well. Exercise also helps in burning calories and maintaining a good weight. So, if you’re overweight, this helps you to lose weight and manage type 2 diabetes.
• Manage your stress: Everyone experiences stress in their lives, but people with type 2 diabetes often struggle with more pressure due to managing a chronic condition on top of everyday stresses. If your stress becomes too much, it may lead to diabetes burnout, which affects your sleep. This happens because stress releases cortisol and adrenaline hormones that prepare the body for the fight-or-flight response in stressful and dangerous situations. These hormones suppress insulin to increase blood sugar levels in the body, to take action. If you deal with chronic stress, these hormones can cause feelings of restlessness and difficulty managing your blood sugar levels. You need to learn techniques to manage stress, such as deep breathing, meditation, and visualization, to reduce your stress to get better sleep. According to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Internal Medicine, people who participated in a mindfulness program experienced fewer episodes of insomnia, less daytime fatigue, and moderate sleep problems. So, if you’re awake at night for more than 20 minutes, you should get out of bed and take some time to meditate and then try to sleep again.

Sleep disturbances are quite common with diabetes because they are closely connected. Your sleep disturbance impacts your blood sugar, and blood sugar highs and lows impact sleep quality. However, you can use the above-mentioned diabetes technology and tips to improve sleep quality with blood sugar control to improve your overall well-being.

Need help with diabetes management? Visit our diabetes specialist in the Brooklyn clinic to get professional medical help. Call us to book your appointment now!!!! Visit our mental health clinic in Brooklyn, to get professional help and guidance on how to manage your problem. Call us on +1-718-367-2555 to get a consultation. If you need help learning coping methods, register your information and make direct contact with our doctors and psychiatrists to learn those methods, log on to www.doralhw.org. Visit us at 1797 Pitkin Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11212.