Many of us spend late nights watching TV, surfing the web, or even catching up at work. Only to spend our morning struggling to wake up; unfortunately, this is not the only consequence. Staying up late at night has the ability to interrupt your internal clock which has been known to cause hypertension. As far as weight is concerned studies are showing that lack of sleep creates confusion for your metabolism, there also seems to be a change in personal food choices which can lead to weight gain. People often choose high calorie, high carbohydrate foods that are often rich in fats when they are not getting enough sleep. These changes can be highly detrimental and can increase your risk for developing heart disease, high cholesterol, and diabetes just to name a few.
Do not think because you are on a healthy diet that you are out of the woods so to speak. A recent study conducted by University of Chicago Endocrinologist Plamen Penev suggests that routinely getting little sleep can present a challenge for people trying to loose or maintain their weight. Penev studied “people on a reduced=calorie, nutritionally balanced diet” that were “sleep restricted to fewer than 5.5 hours (a night) for one 14-day period.” Later “in a separate 14-day period (they) were allowed to sleep for more than 7 hours a night.” Penev concluded that even thought they lost “similar amounts of weight during the two periods,” when subjects were sleep restricted “fat made up 26%” of that weight loss; on the other hand when the subjects had a normal sleep schedule “fat made up 57% of the weight loss.”1
Research on sleep and the effects of restricted sleep is still relatively new to the field of medicine. Over the past 20 years researchers have learned a lot of information about how sleep can affect your health and lifestyle. We are discovering that our cells like fat and brain cells have clock like systems that are affected by the amount of sleep we get. Researchers are coming to understand through advances in research and technology that sleep has an impact on how the body regulates its self; this includes healthy weight management.
Having a healthy lifestyle is all about developing good habits. Perhaps just by turning off our gadgets a little earlier and start counting those sheep sooner we can start developing healthier habits.
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Spivey, A. (2010). Loose sleep, gain weight: Another piece of the obesity puzzle. Environmental Health Perspectives., 118(1): A28-A33. Retrieved from http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/716410
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