Research

Hormonal

Sleeping ≤ 4 hours per night during early pregnancy is associated with a significantly increased risk of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) compared to sleeping 9 hours.

If you are pregnant, aim for adequate sleep duration (around 9 hours as per this study's reference, or at least avoiding extreme shortness like ≤4 hours). This is particularly important in early pregnancy to help manage glucose levels and reduce GDM risk.

ModerateSupportsMEDIUM confidence
After adjusting for maternal age and race/ethnicity, GDM risk was increased among women sleeping ≤ 4 hours compared with those sleeping 9 hours per night (RR = 5.56; 95% CI 1.31-23.69).
Chunfang Qiu et al. · BMC Women s Health · 2010

Why this rating

The study is a pilot study with self-reported sleep data and a relatively small number of GDM cases (n=68), leading to wide confidence intervals.

Source

Glucose intolerance and gestational diabetes risk in relation to sleep duration and snoring during pregnancy: a pilot study

Chunfang Qiu et al. · BMC Women s Health · 2010

DOI 10.1186/1472-6874-10-17

cohort · n=1290Cited 177×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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