According to a recent study in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, pregnant women who don’t get enough sleep are more likely to give birth to infants who have delayed neurodevelopment.
According to the study, babies born to pregnant women who slept fewer than seven hours a day on average had serious neurodevelopmental problems, with boys being especially at risk. Pregnancy-related sleep deprivation has been associated with impairments in the children’s emotional, behavioral, motor, cognitive, and language development.
Additionally, elevated C-peptide levels in the umbilical cord blood of these kids were discovered, which suggests that insulin manufacturing has changed. One result of the pancreas’ production of insulin is C-peptide.
Additionally, the study demonstrated that disorders like impaired glucose tolerance, insulin resistance, and gestational diabetes—all of which were previously linked to inadequate sleep during pregnancy—can affect a child’s neurodevelopment.
The study team clarified that maternal glucose metabolism during pregnancy may influence fetal insulin secretion, which in turn may effect neurodevelopment, even if they were unable to conclusively demonstrate that sleep deprivation actually causes neurodevelopmental abnormalities.