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If you find yourself having trouble sleeping, and also find yourself gaining weight or being unable to lose some, two bits of advice:

1. This is probably not a coincidence, and not something that you should ignore.
2. If you can get a hold of “The Surprising Toll of Sleep Deprivation,” an article by Lawrence J. Epstein, in the June 28 / July 5 issue of Newsweek, either in print or online, by all means give it a read.

Dr. Epstein, a sleep physician at the Harvard Med School and author of its Guide to a Good Night’s Sleep, makes a convincing case that the decrease in American’s sleep times and the increase in their waistlines over recent decades are causally connected. Among the compelling bits of evidence:

• We now average about one hour less sleep per night than in 1960, the approximate year that our obesity rates began their ongoing rise.
• Research has shown that inadequate sleep triggers hormonal changes that increase our appetite and alter our body chemistry in ways that promote weight gain.
• Statistically, those who routinely get insufficient sleep are also more likely to be overweight and diabetic.
• Long-duration studies have found that not getting enough sleep today tends to presage weight gain in the future, especially in children.
• High school students who get 6 to 7 hours of sleep at night are more than 2.5 times as likely to be overweight as those who sleep 8 or more hours.
• The association between sleep deprivation and overweight helps explain earlier studies showing links between sleeplessness and heart disease and hypertension.
• Happily, this pattern is reversible, simply by getting more sleep. A University of Chicago study found that sleeping 10 hours a night for just two nights in a row normalizes the body chemistry and reduces hunger pangs by nearly 25 percent.

Of course, getting a good, solid eight hours of sleep each night isn’t necessarily as easy as it sounds, and may involve inconvenient schedule changes or even medications. But as Dr. Epstein points out, “It is a lot easier to prevent weight gain, diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease by getting enough sleep than it is to treat these problems once they develop.

Pleasant dreams.

Source

Newsweek; “The Surprising Toll of Sleep Deprivation”; Lawrence J. Epstein; June and July 2010.

(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News)

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 29th, 2010 and is filed under Obesity research and studies, Sleep and Obesity. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed. Permalink.