Staying up late at night increases risk of this disease by over 50pc

People who like to stay up late are 50 per cent more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than those who go to bed early, a new study has found.

According to findings presented at the annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes in Madrid, people who stay up late at night are more likely to develop diabetes.

The researchers said that waking up at night increases the risk of type 2 diabetes even when other unhealthy lifestyle factors such as poor diet, lack of exercise, alcohol consumption, smoking and lack of sleep are factored in.

Jeroen van der Velde, a postdoctoral researcher at Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands, said one possible explanation is that the body’s natural clock for night waking is out of sync with social schedules.

When this happens, the body’s systems suffer a misalignment that we know can lead to metabolic disorders and ultimately type 2 diabetes.