Diabetes is spreading rapidly around the world, and according to the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) in 2013, 8.3% of adults (382 million people) have diabetes, and it is expected that the number of people with diabetes will be more than 592 million in 25 years. At the same time, lifestyle changes, competitive pressures in the workplace, and physical and mental illnesses have led to changes in people’s sleep status, and the number of people with sleep disorders is increasing. According to a 2013 survey by the National Sleep Foundation in the United States, 21% of Americans sleep less than 6h on weekdays, and sleep disorders are also prevalent in our population. There is a temporal consistency between sleep disorders and the prevalence of diabetes, is there a correlation between them? First, the shortening of slow-wave sleep can lead to increased stress hormones According to physiological functions and electroencephalographic changes in human sleep is divided into non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. NREM sleep can be further divided into 1~4 stages, of which stages 3 and 4 are collectively referred to as slow-wave sleep, that is, the so-called deep sleep stage, which accounts for 15% to 20% of the total sleep time. During the slow wave sleep stage, the sympathetic excitability of the human body decreases and the vagal excitability increases, resulting in slower heart rate, lower blood pressure, lower glucose utilization in the cranial brain, increased release of growth hormone and prolactin, and suppression of secretion of the pituitary-hypothalamus-adrenal axis. As we age, slow-wave sleep gradually decreases and morning cortisol levels gradually increase. The decrease in slow-wave sleep causes changes in cytokine levels, which increase insulin resistance by affecting endothelial function, post-insulin receptor signaling, and other pathways. It has been suggested that the proportion of slow-wave sleep is negatively correlated with body mass index and waist circumference, and that short-term suppression of slow-wave sleep can affect insulin sensitivity and increase the risk of developing type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). reduced slow-wave sleep can also be observed in type 1 diabetes mellitus, which is associated with an increase in blood glucose levels. Reduced slow-wave sleep leads to elevated stress hormones, which is one of the reasons why patients with sleep disorders have an increased risk of diabetes, and increasing slow-wave sleep is an important step in improving metabolic diseases caused by sleep disorders. Second, sleep duration is associated with diabetes risk Patients who self-reported that they slept less than 6-7 h per day had a significantly increased risk of developing T2DM. Data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) suggest that poor sleep quality and shortened sleep duration are closely related to prediabetes. A recent meta-analysis of the relationship between sleep duration and diabetes showed that the relationship between sleep duration and the risk of diabetes mellitus was “U-shaped”, and the risk of T2DM was lowest with 7-8 h of sleep per day, and the risk of T2DM could be increased with too short or too long sleep, while the right amount of sleep could help to prevent and delay the occurrence of T2DM. The right amount of sleep can help prevent and delay the development of T2DM. Night shift workers often face sleep deprivation, and studies have shown that shift work is also a risk factor for the development of diabetes, increasing the risk of diabetes nearly onefold compared to employees who work regular hours. Diabetic patients are susceptible to depression and anxiety due to the long-term suffering of the disease, coupled with poor blood glucose control, nightmares and awakenings caused by hypoglycemia, nighttime monitoring of blood glucose, meal refills, urination, and other interruptions caused by sleep disorders are exacerbated, shortening the effective duration of sleep, while bringing about a reduction of slow-wave sleep in the structure of the sleep. Third, obstructive sleep apnea hypopnea syndrome (OSAHS) is the focus of attention of diabetic patients One important reason for the decline in sleep quality of T2DM patients is sleep disordered breathing (SDB).SDB can make the sleep structure show segmentation changes, and the proportion of slow-wave sleep decreases, of which obstructive sleep apnea hypopnea syndrome (OSAHS) is closely related to T2DM. Otake et al. conducted a cross-sectional study of 679 OSAHS patients and 73 non-OSAHS patients, and the results showed that the prevalence of diabetes mellitus in the OSAHS group was much higher than that in the control group (25.9% vs. 8.2%,P<0.01), and found that patients with severe osahs had a much higher insulin resistance than patients with other degrees of osahs and non-osahs. The prevalence of osahs was found to be 66.7% in a survey of hospitalized t2dm patients in which the author participated. Many studies suggest that osahs may be an independent risk factor for the development of diabetes. < span=""> OSAHS also has a significant impact on blood glucose in diabetic patients.Aronsohn et al. performed glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) and overnight polysomnography in diabetic patients, and the results suggested that after correcting for multiple factors such as age, gender, race, body mass index, diabetes medication, disease duration, sleep duration, and lifestyle, patients with OSAHS were more likely to have a more severe condition. The more severe the condition, the poorer the control of blood glucose levels. Compared with diabetic patients without OSAHS, diabetic patients with mild, moderate and severe OSAHS had an increase in HbA1c of 1.49%, 1.93% and 3.69%, respectively. It is suggested that reducing the severity of OSAHS in patients is beneficial for glycemic control in diabetic patients. The relationship between diabetes mellitus and OSAHS is bi-directional, or we can call them concomitant or co-occurring diseases, and the high prevalence of concomitant OSAHS and diabetes mellitus suggests that once a patient is found to be suffering from one of the two diseases, he or she should be screened for the other disease. Intervention in diabetic patients with comorbid sleep disorders is beneficial to the control of metabolic abnormalities Continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) therapy in T2DM patients with comorbid OSAHS resulted in significant reductions in the mean nocturnal glucose level, the nocturnal maximum glucose level, and the fluctuation of the mean nocturnal glucose level compared with those of the pre-treatment period. In our previous study, we also found that CPAP not only improves sleep quality in T2DM patients, but also significantly improves insulin sensitivity and reduces HbA1c in T2DM patients with comorbid OSAHS.CPAP can be used as one of the effective therapeutic means to improve glucose metabolism abnormality in T2DM patients with comorbid moderate-to-severe OSAHS. Sleep disorders are closely related to abnormal glucose metabolism and glycemic control in diabetic patients, and there is now evidence suggesting that sleep disorders may be a new correctable risk factor in the development and progression of diabetes. Attention to sleep disorders and improvement of sleep quality will have a beneficial effect on the control of diabetic metabolic disorders and the prevention and treatment of diabetic complications, and we should pay enough attention to this in our clinical work.