Hit The Snooze Button To Live Longer

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Hit The Snooze Button To Live Longer By Michael Roizen, M.D., and Mehmet Oz, M.D.

Brunch at 10?

Make it 11.

As if not having circles under your eyes wasn't a compelling enough reason to get enough sleep, here's another biggie: You'll be less likely to age from diabetes, the makes-you-sick-and-tired disease that affects more than 24 million Americans and 2 million Canadians.

While more than 80 million of us in North America have the genes for type 2 diabetes, very few of us have to express them, if we do the right things. When researchers let people sleep just 5.5 hours a night for two weeks, they saw that the sleep-deprived folks had started to develop diabetes; they had increased insulin resistance and reduced glucose tolerance. What does that mean?

Basically, your body has mailmen that take energy from food and place it inside the mailbox in your cells.

But with diabetes or insulin resistance, those mailmen can't get the mail inside.

So glucose, like a posse of bored teenagers, hangs out in your bloodstream and causes all kinds of trouble.

That's dangerous to your arteries, your brain, your immune system and your kidneys. Previous research saw the risk for developing diabetes go up with far less sleep, but these scientists decided to test a more realistic scenario of just 5.5 hours (sound familiar?). Too busy to get to bed earlier?

No, you're not; especially since your life depends on it!

Try inching up your bedtime by 10 little minutes a night.

By this time next week, you may have dropped your risk of aging from diabetes. ======== The YOU Docs, Mehmet Oz and Mike Roizen, are authors of "YOU: The Owner's Manual." Want more? See "The Dr. Oz Show" on TV starting Sept. 14 (check local listings). To submit questions, go to www.RealAge.com. © 2009 Michael Roizen, M.D. and Mehmet Oz, M.D. Distributed by King Features Syndicate, Inc.