Purifying the air in the bedroom during nighttime sleep helps stabilize blood glucose levels in people with prediabetes, News-Medical reports, according to infohub.kz.
Scientists at NYU Langone Health conducted the first study of its kind in humans. More than 150 volunteers with prediabetes — a borderline condition in which blood sugar is already above normal but diabetes has not yet developed — took part in the experiment.
Participants were divided into two groups: for a month, some slept in rooms with working HEPA filters (high-efficiency air purification filters), while others slept with dummy devices that appeared to be running but did not clean the air.
The real filters reduced the concentration of fine harmful particles in the bedrooms by 36 percent. As a result, participants in the first group saw their daily blood sugar fluctuations fall by almost 8 percent. In addition, clean air helped smooth out morning glucose spikes after breakfast: peak values dropped by 13 percent, and the overall volume of excess blood sugar after meals fell by 17 percent.
The authors stressed that polluted air harms not only the lungs but also the heart and metabolism. Once in the bloodstream, microparticles trigger inflammatory processes. The researchers plan to continue the project to determine whether regular air filtration can prevent the development of diabetes and reduce the risks of heart attack or stroke.