Christian Benedict

Through advanced sleep-tracking technologies and continuous glucose monitoring applied under free-living conditions, my project will help decipher to which extent broken sleep, an umbrella term describing sleep patterns hallmarked by short sleep duration, low-quality sleep, late bedtime, and irregular sleep timing, impacts daily blood glucose profiles in 240 individuals with overweight or obesity. My project will also be the first to study whether day-to-day variations in the length and depth of the most restorative sleep stage, slow-wave sleep, matter for daytime blood glucose control in people with unhealthy weight, as previously demonstrated in small experiments involving metabolically healthy normal-weight adults. We also hypothesize that blood glucose surges occurring near sleep onset, indicative of late eating, alter the restorative power of subsequent nighttime sleep, with possible negative implications for brain health. Understanding the interaction between sleep, glucose control, and brain health in this population at risk for type 2 diabetes may inform the development of interventions to improve sleep and blood glucose management and potentially benefit brain health.