Lost Sleep Equals Gained Weight

sfird · Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2004 9:10 am

If you're having trouble keeping your weight in check, you might want to look to your sleep habits. A series of university studies published this month suggest a link between sleep loss and hormones that control appetite. Test subjects were more hungry and favored sweet and starchy foods when their sleep was cut short. The studies also found that the less people sleep, the more they weigh. In short, people appear to replace lost sleep with extra calories.

A Univesity of Chicago study found that sleeping 4 hours per night for 2 nights was enough to significantly change hormone levels. Levels of leptin, a hormone that signals the body that it has enough food, dropped 18 percent. At the same time, levels of hunger-triggering ghrelin jumped 28 percent. When they ate, the sleep-deprived subjects chose to consume sweets over fruit, vegetables or dairy products.

A related study at Stanford University demonstrated a more direct link between sleep and weight. Among people surveyed, those who averaged the fewest hours of nightly sleep also had the highest body mass index, a measure that scales weight to height. Given the chronic sleep restriction common in modern society, this may help explain the high rates of obesity today.