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Adults are recommended to sleep seven to nine hours a day, depending on the body, but most people, sadly, spend much less time sleeping, writes sciencealert.com.
One study found that there is a link between shorter than recommended sleep and higher amounts of body fat, meaning that lack of sleep increases the risk of being overweight and obese, and sleep itself can have a significant impact on how to get rid of unwanted pounds.
In most cases, the main goal of weight loss is to reduce fat and maximize muscle mass. If you don’t have enough time to sleep, sports and a balanced diet may not be enough to combat being overweight.
Associative photo.
One study found that a person who followed a diet for more than two weeks but slept for only five and a half hours lost less fat than someone who slept after an hour and a half a day. Importantly, you also lost lean mass (including muscle) faster.
Another study also showed similar results, this time in eight weeks, when people who had tried to lose weight at least five days a week slept an hour less than recommended. These results revealed that prolonged sleep on weekends would not compensate for the damage.
Metabolism, appetite and sleep.
There are even more reasons why less sleep is associated with more weight and can make weight loss efforts more difficult. These include metabolism, appetite, and food choices. Sleep affects two very important appetite regulating hormones, leptin and ghrelin.
Leptin is an appetite-suppressing hormone, so when leptin is high, we feel full. Ghrelin is a hormone that stimulates the appetite, it is often called simply the “hunger hormone”.
Another study involving 1,024 adults found that poor sleep was associated with higher levels of ghrelin and lower levels of leptin. This combination increases the appetite and complicates efforts to limit calorie intake, which is why that person tends to overeat. Therefore, a change in food intake due to hormonal changes can lead to the appearance of extra pounds. And that means that quality sleep should be a priority for everyone.
Furthermore, lack of sleep not only alters the hormones responsible for appetite, but also affects food choices and the way the brain perceives food. The researchers found that the brain areas responsible for the retaliation mechanism respond more actively to food after a poor night’s sleep (six nights after just four hours of sleep) than when the rest is good (six nights after nine hours). This may explain why you want to eat more frequently and eat unhealthy foods that are high in carbohydrates and fat.
The duration of sleep also affects metabolism, especially glucose metabolism.
After eating, the body releases insulin, a hormone that helps process glucose in the blood. Lack of sleep interferes with the body’s response to insulin, making it difficult to manage glucose.
A bad night’s sleep might not do much harm, but long-term lack of sleep leads to serious illnesses like obesity and type 2 diabetes.
The article’s authors conducted their own study, which found that in healthy young men, just one night of poor sleep (roughly four hours of sleep) can alter the insulin response to glucose. Since people who do not get adequate rest at night are already happy to eat high-glucose foods due to increased appetite and the retaliatory mechanism in the brain, poor glucose processing exacerbates the situation.
Excess glucose (due to both increased consumption and reduced breakdown capacity) can be converted to fatty acids and accumulated as fat. The process can be time consuming and lead to overweight, the authors note.
Experts identify physical activity as one of the ways to solve the problem of lack of sleep. Sport has a positive effect on appetite by reducing the amount of ghrelin and increasing the amount of peptide YY (a hormone secreted by the gastrointestinal tract associated with a feeling of fullness and satisfaction) in the body.
People who exercise tend to eat less, but so far experts cannot say whether this trend is also seen in the context of lack of sleep.
The study also revealed that physical activity can help prevent metabolic disorders that occur when there is lack of sleep. This results in a better response to insulin and more effective glucose control.
Experts have also noted the possible benefits of a single workout for glucose metabolism after a sleepless night. While these results are encouraging, researchers have yet to elucidate the effects of long-term physical activity on the bodies of people who sleep little.
Clearly, sleep plays a huge role in fighting unnecessary pounds. Poor sleep increases your appetite (caused by hormonal changes), craves unhealthy foods, and doesn’t really help you lose weight. This means that sleep should be considered an equivalent factor in the fight against overweight to diet and physical activity.
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