Randomized trial · 1999
Impact of sleep debt on metabolic and endocrine function
K. Spiegel, R. Leproult, E. Van Cauter. The Lancet · N=11.
Sleep debt in young men raised evening cortisol and reduced glucose tolerance to a pre-diabetic range. Foundational endocrine-sleep trial.
Open sourcedoi:10.1016/S0140-6736(99)01376-8PMID 10560671
Edges that cite this paper
- Evening alcohol, 1.0 grams per kilogram in men and 0.85 in women, cut total sleep time from 436.6 to 421.3 minutes and sleep efficiency from 91.2 to 88.0 percent in thirty-one social drinkers on a randomized crossover with overnight PSG.
- Six 4-hour nights raised evening cortisol in eleven young men. Four nights of 5-to-9-hour beds in eighty-eight adolescents did not move evening or morning saliva cortisol.
- Experimental sleep restriction lowers insulin sensitivity. Spiegel, Leproult, and Van Cauter put eleven young men into sleep debt and watched glucose tolerance fall into a pre-diabetic range. Later randomized weeks, including clamp studies and a six-week trial in thirty-eight women, found the same direction.
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What Causes What. “Impact of sleep debt on metabolic and endocrine function.” https://whatcauseswhat.org/papers/p-spiegel-1999 (atlas updated 2026-09-02).