Publication:

Vitamin D and sleep duration: a possible link

Background Normal-range sleep duration is an important factor for general health and metabolism. Insufficient or excessive sleep duration is associated with various chronic physical or mental illness, such as obesity, hypertension, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, depression, and other psychiatric diseases. Sleep duration is mainly affected by circadian rhythm, and circadian rhythm is affected by the melatonin level controlled by the light exposure. Therefore, sun exposure has an important role for determining sleep time. Aim and objective was to find an association between self-reported sleep duration with serum vitamin D levels in healthy adults.

Methods A cross sectional study was carried out on 150 first professional MBBS students. They were asked about their sleep duration via a questionnaire and their morning samples of serum vitamin D was taken. All the data was put in SPSS software and analyzed.

Results There was a definite positive correlation between sleep duration and the concentration of 25(OH)D in this study (r=0.11, p<0.05).

Conclusions The present study revealed that vitamin D [25(OH)D] deficiency was an independent predictor of insufficient sleep among healthy adults.