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What Causes What
MECHANISM

Sleep duration and regularity → Cortisol

Sleep debt is an HPA intervention. It is also a HOMA-IR intervention.

Randomized trial · High confidence · N=11

Supported by an experiment or a tightly identified design. Still read the caveats.

Mechanism

Spiegel, Leproult, and Van Cauter restricted sleep in young men and watched evening cortisol stay high and glucose tolerance fall into a pre-diabetic band. This is how lifestyle talks to the dual-hormone system without a T gel.

Caveats

Classic small-N inpatient designs. Direction and mechanism have been replicated in spirit; exact effect sizes vary.

Effect

qualitative. Sleep debt raises evening cortisol and wrecks glucose tolerance (Spiegel 1999).

Nodes

Lifestyle & environmentSleep duration and regularityBiology & endocrinologyCortisol

Cite this page

What Causes What. “Sleep duration and regularity → Cortisol.” https://whatcauseswhat.org/edges/e-sleep-cortisol (atlas updated 2026-08-31).

https://whatcauseswhat.org/edges/e-sleep-cortisol

Papers