Dr. Ben Bikman

Well, everything you just said, I am nodding to because I can relate.

When I've worn CGMs, I absolutely see that the single most predictive variable of my glycemia in any given day is how did I sleep?

Nothing that I've played around with, nothing has even come close.

So when you get one bad night of sleep, the stress, so it fits under the stress category to make it very succinct.

So of the three primary causes of quick insulin resistance, it's stress when it comes to sleep deprivation.

One bad night of sleep will result in a much higher and disrupted rhythm of cortisol.

And so cortisol will cause insulin resistance in every biological model very quickly.

So too will epinephrine.

And epinephrine is another stress hormone, sort of the faster stress hormone, the cortisol being a little more delayed.

But both of them are higher with regards to sleep deprivation.

And even epinephrine, even adrenaline can cause insulin resistance in humans.

If you do a steady little drip in a human of adrenaline, they're going to be insulin resistant, demonstrably insulin resistant within just an hour or two.

So that's how sleep deprivation causes insulin resistance.

And to make matters even worse, what is the most common intervention to try to offset the negative consequences of sleep deprivation?

Well, it's more caffeine.

Well, more caffeine is going to increase epinephrine even more.

Epinephrine causes insulin resistance.

So even the solution to the sleep deprivation ends up inadvertently compounding the metabolic consequences of the sleep deprivation.

Now, that's not to say caffeine doesn't have some metabolic benefits.

It can when used correctly, like I would say when used in the context of performance.