Multiple studies have found that people who don’t get enough sleep are more likely to increase their food consumption without an equivalent increase in energy expenditure.
Making this worse is that sleep deprivation also appears to provoke a tendency to select high-calorie foods that offer less nutritional benefit and create a greater risk of weight gain.
Certain hormones are considered to be the driving factors behind these poor nutritional choices associated with sleep deprivation.
Ghrelin and Leptin
One study found that young men who were deprived of sleep had higher levels of the appetite-stimulating hormone ghrelin and lower levels of the satiety-inducing hormone leptin, with a corresponding increase in hunger and appetite-especially for foods rich in fat and carbohydrates.
Cortisol
With too little sleep, the body is also more likely to produce the stress-response hormone cortisol.
After sleep deprivation, subjects in several studies had higher levels of cortisol later in the day, a time when it should be tapering off to prepare the body for rest.
Heightened cortisol prompts the body to store more fat and be more inclined to use other soft tissue, such as muscle, as energy, which means that sleep-deprived dieters lose more muscle and gain more fat than those who are well-rested.
Insulin
Insulin is a hormone produced by the pancreas that enables cells in muscles and tissues of the body to absorb glucose from the bloodstream, to be used for energy.
In this way, insulin regulates blood glucose (blood sugar), helping to maintain glucose homeostasis that is neither too high (hyperglycemia) nor too low (hypoglycemia).
Cells can become resistant to insulin, making them less able to absorb glucose from the blood which leads to increased hunger, higher blood pressure and weight gain.
Pair the above with impaired judgment and poor decision-making skills (another side effect of a lack of sleep) and you've got the perfect sabotage storm.
Sleep is a vital and often neglected foundational pillar of human health and wellbeing. This brief post has only touched upon the impact on weight loss associated with sleep deprivation, but the negative implications on overall life caused by sleep deprivation are numerous, serious and too often overlooked.
Comentários