Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Thursday, September 2, 2010
The Correlation Between Sleep Deprivation and Weight Gain
We all know the simple math of losing weight. Expending more calories than you're taking in. Why, then, is the scale not moving? Many studies have shown that sleep deprivation can have an enormous effect on your ability to lose weight.
Studies have shown that too little sleep changes the body's secretion of leptin and gherelin hormones, which control your hunger and satiety levels. When you are sleep deprived, your leptin levels are low. This triggers your body into thinking it needs more food, therefore, resulting in an increased consumption of unneccesary calories. Same goes for gherelin, the hormone that tells your body it needs food. After eating a meal, your gherelin levels drop. However, when you are sleep deprived these levels remain high, triggering you to eat more.
A recent review by a team from Case Western Reserve University and Harvard Medical School found that all of the large studies that followed people over time agreed that short sleep duration was associated with future weight gain. This connection was particularly strong in children: all 31 studies in children showed a strong association between short sleep duration and current and future obesity. For example, a study by Susan Redline and colleagues at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine showed an inverse correlation between sleep duration and obesity in high-school-age students. The shorter the sleep, the higher the likelihood of being overweight, with those getting six to seven hours of sleep more than two and a half times as likely to be overweight as those getting more than eight hours.
The connection between sleep deprivation and obesity comes on top of previous research linking sleep deprivation with increased risk of high blood pressure and heart disease.
You can help reverse your risk simply by increasing your shut eye every night. The University of Chicago study on sleep duration and appetite found that allowing the study subjects to sleep 10 hours for two consecutive nights returned the hormones to normal levels and lowered hunger and appetite ratings by almost 25 percent.
Some strategies for getting to sleep quicker? Avoid bright screens, such as computers, before bed. Try reading a book. Keep the lights dim, which will help trigger your mind into thinking it's tired. Avoid exercise too late at night. Hormones released after exercise have been shown to increase your energy levels and keep you up later than desired. Slowly, increase your sleep time every night by 15 minutes until you have reached 8 hours of sleep. It's a lot easier to prevent weight gain and diabetes by getting enough sleep than it is to treat the problems once they develop.
Studies have shown that too little sleep changes the body's secretion of leptin and gherelin hormones, which control your hunger and satiety levels. When you are sleep deprived, your leptin levels are low. This triggers your body into thinking it needs more food, therefore, resulting in an increased consumption of unneccesary calories. Same goes for gherelin, the hormone that tells your body it needs food. After eating a meal, your gherelin levels drop. However, when you are sleep deprived these levels remain high, triggering you to eat more.
A recent review by a team from Case Western Reserve University and Harvard Medical School found that all of the large studies that followed people over time agreed that short sleep duration was associated with future weight gain. This connection was particularly strong in children: all 31 studies in children showed a strong association between short sleep duration and current and future obesity. For example, a study by Susan Redline and colleagues at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine showed an inverse correlation between sleep duration and obesity in high-school-age students. The shorter the sleep, the higher the likelihood of being overweight, with those getting six to seven hours of sleep more than two and a half times as likely to be overweight as those getting more than eight hours.
The connection between sleep deprivation and obesity comes on top of previous research linking sleep deprivation with increased risk of high blood pressure and heart disease.
You can help reverse your risk simply by increasing your shut eye every night. The University of Chicago study on sleep duration and appetite found that allowing the study subjects to sleep 10 hours for two consecutive nights returned the hormones to normal levels and lowered hunger and appetite ratings by almost 25 percent.
Some strategies for getting to sleep quicker? Avoid bright screens, such as computers, before bed. Try reading a book. Keep the lights dim, which will help trigger your mind into thinking it's tired. Avoid exercise too late at night. Hormones released after exercise have been shown to increase your energy levels and keep you up later than desired. Slowly, increase your sleep time every night by 15 minutes until you have reached 8 hours of sleep. It's a lot easier to prevent weight gain and diabetes by getting enough sleep than it is to treat the problems once they develop.
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