A recent study suggests that getting less sleep at night may contribute to weight gain along with other health factors. Researchers at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons discovered that adults who cut 80 minutes out of their nightly rest for six weeks gained a pound on average and spent more time being less active.
Sleep is Good for the Body
This means in a year, a person could gain roughly nine pounds, all just because you didn’t go to bed on time. Something that 30% of adults face state researchers. Most of the research on sleep deprivation has been done under dramatic conditions, like only allowing participants to sleep a maximum of four hours, for example. However, in real life, lack of sleep is generally losing an hour or two a night, which adds up over time.
The recent study looked at adults who averaged seven to eight hours of sleep a night and then told them to delay their sleep time by an hour and a half. Then the researchers gathered data on each participant. After six weeks, the participants stated they slept between five and six hours a night. The researchers discovered that, on average, the participants gained one pound over the six weeks.
The study author, Faris Zuraikat, assistant professor of nutritional medicine in Columbia’s Department of Medicine and Institute for Human Nutrition, said, “When extrapolated to a full year, we would expect that losing less than an hour and a half of sleep per night could result in clinically meaningful weight gain.”
Less is Not Better
Additionally, those who underwent mild sleep deprivation spent roughly 17 minutes being less active than someone who slept eight to nine hours a night. For postmenopausal women and men, that number nearly doubled to thirty minutes a day.
“Even when we accounted for the fact that they were awake longer when sleep was shortened, participants spent more time being inactive than when they got adequate sleep,” Zuraikat said. “This is notable, as people who are more sedentary have elevated risk for chronic diseases.”
Poor sleep has us changing our behavior. Why? We become tired and less motivated to be active. Over time, we will also reach for rich, sweet, and fatty foods. Lack of sleep also directly affects our body.
Getting less than seven hours of sleep a night can lead to inflammation and high blood pressure, stressing the heart and potentially contributing to heart disease. When we are sleeping, our blood pressure drops. This means the less time we sleep, the less of a break our heart has. Moreover, less sleep also messes with the body’s blood sugar. Excess weight is a leading driver of high blood sugar.
Other Issues
The more sugar in the blood means more sugar is stored as fat in the body if a person becomes insulin resistant. Disrupted or short sleep can raise a person’s risk of insulin resistance by 40% to 80%.
Sleep deprivation could also be a bad habit that could accelerate aging in the brain, more specifically, damage linked to a higher risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s, according to a recent study. The others are sleeplessness, snoring, daytime napping, and unintentional daytime dozing.
Furthermore, the study found that those who slept less than seven hours a night had more brain lesions associated with dementia and Alzheimer’s. Sleep is essential for the brain to perform functions like memory processing, cellular repair, and the removal of waste and toxins.
By Sheena
Sources:
New York Post: The ‘mild’ bedtime mistake that can make you gain weight: study
Science Daily: Losing just 80 minutes of sleep a night could make you gain weight
Image by Andy Wright Courtesy of Flickr – Creative Commons
