Sunday, December 6, 2009

Women Who Sleep Less, Eat Less...and Still Gain

So in my constant battle to find the best research on health and weight loss I stubbled on this little article about how sleep effects your weight...it's crazy but they found that sleep was PARAMOUNT to the success of your body function specifically, weight loss. I have a little tidbit of it here for you to digest...

Inadequate sleep:
http://thyroid.about.com/od/loseweightsuccessfully/a/sleepdiet.htm

•interferes with the body's ability to metabolize carbohydrates and causes high blood levels of glucose, which leads to higher insulin levels and greater body-fat storage.

•drives down leptin levels, which causes the body to crave carbohydrates.

•reduces levels of growth hormone--a protein that helps regulate the body's proportions of fat and muscle.

•can lead to insulin resistance and contribute to increased risk of diabetes

•can increase blood pressure

•can increase the risk of heart disease
Even in young, healthy people, a sleep deficit of three to four hours a night over the course of a week has a triple-whammy effect on the body.

go read the rest...is a small article, but gets you thinking!

9 comments:

South Beach Steve said...

I don't see the link, but the info is great. I will probably post a link back to this one later. It is amazing how much a thing like sleep can affect our weight loss.

Pining for Pinterest said...

I so agree! Now I have to wait until the kids get older to get this accomplished :-)

Stephanie said...

Oh absolutely! I've had quite a few clients who are overweight and sleep far too little. More sleep has definitely aided their weight loss process.
BODA weight loss

Ak said...

Sleep is so important. Even when you're sick, it seems like sleep is the only medicine that really gets you better!

Angelia said...

I had an Drs appt yesterday to discover yes I gained weight, yes I have a hyper thyroid, and all the systems. (appetite, nerves, etc)

So, at least now I know why I crave food.... endlessly!
Hopefully in the next few weeks they can diagnose which disorder, fix it and I can get back to normal. :-)

Angelia said...

symptoms, not systems. Did I really type that? Must be a Freudian slip my symptoms, affecting my systems. HA. I did say I'm on medication? :-)

beej said...

Wow, that's crazy! Okay....get to sleep, then Nat! :)

Johnny at The Lean Saloon said...

What's odd is that the author of the article says that women who sleep less also eat less.

"Were the women who were getting less sleep also eating more? The answer was no. In fact, the opposite was true."

Yet, in the same article she says that cortisol drives hunger and made them eat more.

"Insufficient sleep can cause the release of additional cortisol -- the stress hormone -- and can stimulate hunger."

This contradictory made me look at the article more critically.

From my own research, I believe the sleep deficiency has some contribution, but what the author doesn't say is how much weight over the same time the group that had the most sleep ALSO GAINED. The article compares only what the group that had less sleep gained over the group that had more sleep over the 16 years. I've seen this study not long ago, and the body of the study indicates that ALL GROUPS gained.

It would seem that sleep deficiency enhances weight gain, possibly by INCREASED hormonal interference -- like increased cortisol, insulin resistance, glucose metabolism, and decreased fat metabolism.

The continuous and obvious message throughout the article seems to be missed (purposely?) by the author: that is, possible excessive carbohydrate intake, which has been shown repeatedly to affect all the hormones mentioned in the previous paragraph above. Perhaps sleep deficiency only enhances the effects, reflecting an increase in the weight gained OVER the weight gained by those who sleep sufficiently (but still gained).

All the information I've read in the past 15 years tell me that consuming carbohydrates that don't chronically impact insulin levels can maintain healthy fat regulation, or fix that which is impaired.

And without a doubt, sleep is very important in weight management. I just wanted to point out that a whole different mechanism that might be causing weight gain, one not pointed out by the article simply because the author did not mention that ALL GROUPS gained weight.

Johnny at The Lean Saloon said...

BTW, carbohydrates that don't impact insulin level drastically are:

Vegetables of all kinds
Fruits of the citrus kinds

You don't have to remove all carbohydrates from the diet. Just rearrange the amount. More vegetables and more fruits over easily-digestible carbohydrates like pasta and breads and most things grain-based.

Hopefully I'm just offering some alternatives to consider -- certainly not saying that this is the best way.