Posted on August 3, 2009 in Latest News
Our feet should be warm for the sleep to onset and maintain, as a part of normal biology of the body. And diabetic patients often complain of less sleep. This article tries to understand the relation between the two.
What is Diabetes?
The food during the process of digestion get converted in to glucose . The glucose reaches various organs of our body through the blood stream providing energy to the body for all its metabolic activities. The organ pancreas releases the hormone insulin which regulates the presence of glucose in our body. It converts glucose into energy or stores it for later use. When our pancreas can’t produce enough insulin,the amount of glucose rises in our body causing a condition medically called diabetes mellitus.
What is Thermoregulation?
Homeostasis is the process where the body tries to maintain its steady state even though the environment around it changes. The change in the environment changes our body’s state too.This automatically triggers a mechanism which tries to restore the original state of the body back.
Thermoregulation is a type of Homeostasis,involving the regulation of the temperature of the body.Humans are called endothermic animals because our body maintains the temperature around 35 to 40 degree centigrade ( called the set point ) constantly and the mechanism responsible for maintaining this temperature is within the human body.
Diabetes and Thermoregulation of the feet during sleep:
• Scientists tried to study the effect of diabetes on the thermoregulation of feet during the sleep.
• 32 normal people, 28 diabetic patients without neuropathy, 14 diabetic patients with small diabetic polyneuropathy and 27 diabetic patients with advanced diabetic polyneuropathy, participated in the experiment.
• Their foot temperature was recorded along with the ambient temperature of the room.
• Data was collected for 32 hours and analyzed.
• The conclusions drawn by the scientists from the results obtained were , that the feet of the diabetic patients were cooler than the feet of the healthy people.
• The rate at which the cooling takes place is also high when compared with the healthy people.
• This clearly established the fact that the diabetic patients have impaired thermoregulation of the feet while they sleep.
• This is potentially one of the reasons why diabetic patients complain of less sleep.
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