Chronic Sleep Deficit Will Make You Fat

Successful, long-term weight loss means keeping a sleep schedule that makes you feel energized and ready to take on the day. You won’t enjoy or even do your exercise for the day if you are exhausted. Sleep deprivation can seriously throw off your behavior patterns and your body’s response to food, sabotaging your weight-loss efforts in several different ways. Ghrelin signals your brain that it’s time to eat. When you’re sleep-deprived, your body makes more ghrelin.

Leptin, on the other hand, cues your brain to put the fork down. When you’re not getting enough sleep, leptin levels plummet, signaling your brain to eat more food.

Sleep deprivation makes you “metabolically groggy," University of Chicago researchers say. Within just 4 days of insufficient sleep, your body’s ability to process insulin -- a hormone needed to change sugar, starches, and other food into energy -- goes awry. Insulin sensitivity, the researchers found, dropped by more than 30%. That means, there is enough insulin but it can’t get the nutrients into the cells. The “doors are locked”, so to speak.

Then there’s the cortisol spike that comes from too little sleep.  Cortisol is a hormone that is released within the body that works to break down body tissues. In times of stress, you will find cortisol levels very high since the body is getting ready for the fight or flight response mechanism.

Dieting itself puts the body in a stressed state since it is taking in fewer calories than it would ideally like to function, therefore you're already at risk for such problems as muscle mass loss (which occurs when high cortisol levels begin breaking down the body's tissues).

In one study put on by the Laboratory of Physiology in Belgium, researchers noted that those who were shorting themselves of sleep noticed higher afternoon and early evening cortisol levels than those who were not.

Sleep loss could thus affect the resiliency of the stress response and may accelerate the development of metabolic and cognitive problems through excess cortisol.

Cortisol has a profound effect on our entire biology.  It affects our endocrine system, which produces all our hormones, including thyroid hormone (which regulates metabolism), insulin (which regulates blood sugar), and our sex hormones (estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone, which regulate sexual function, menstrual cycles, and menopause).  Cortisol has a profound effect on our digestion and on our immune system.  It also affects our neurotransmitters, the brain chemicals that determine energy, mood, mental clarity, focus, and sleep.

Cortisol cues our body to hold onto body fat, so it plays a huge role in weight gain.  It is a major contributor to anxiety and depression. When our cortisol levels are optimal, we feel mentally sharp, clear, and motivated.  When our cortisol levels are off, we tend to feel foggy, listless, and fatigued.  Cortisol also affects our blood pressure and circulation; our lungs, muscles, and bones; and even our skin and hair.

Source: https://doctordoni.com/2014/12/how-cortisol-affects-your-sleep/

Cortisol affects your blood sugar levels, too. Elevated cortisol, elevated blood sugar.

Studies in sleep deprivation in adolecents showed that short sleep duration was associated with increased odds of fast food consumption.  Self-reported habitual short sleep duration ( < 7 h/night) was associated with reduced odds of vegetable and fruit consumption compared with the recommended sleep duration (>8 h/night) (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24524288)

Your brain functions differently without sleep. Researchers at Harvard Medical School performed brain scans on people who reported high daytime sleepiness and measured their brain activity in response to high-calorie foods. The scans revealed reduced activation in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex—an area of the brain involved with inhibition and behavior control. Translation: Lowered inhibitions indicate a tendency to overeat when you're tired. If you are staying up late, your tendency to eat unhealthy snakes increases.

Another study from Columbia University also found brain activity differences in sleepy people's response to food. Their study revealed increased activation in the insular cortex, which regulates pleasure-seeking behaviors. Unhealthy food activates this region more than healthy food, which means that skipping out on sleep could make it harder to skip out on a trip to the vending machine.

Clearly, the solution is to make sleep a higher priority than whatever is keeping you up, but you have to do this by changing your behavior. Try using specific, trackable tactics like…

• ·       Set a bedtime. Count back 8-9 hours from when you have to wake up: that’s your bedtime. Write it in your calendar if you have to, and set an alarm on whatever electronic device you typically use in the evening.
  ·       Create a bedtime routine. If you always get up to brush your teeth at 9:30, sooner or later it’ll get automatic and you’ll end up doing it even on “off days.”
  ·      Ban electronics from the bedroom. If they’re not there, they can’t distract you.
  ·    Schedule a “done time” for your work. Don’t tell yourself you have all evening to do whatever it is; give yourself a deadline so you can get it done and then relax and get ready for bed.
  ·     Sleep disorders (sleep apnea is probably the most common example) can make your sleep ineffective even if you’re technically out cold for most of those 8 hours. This has to be addressed with a doctor’s or sleep laboratory’s help.
  ·      Create a bedtime ritual. It's not the time to tackle big issues. Instead, take a warm bath, meditate, or read.
  ·       Stick to a schedule, waking up and retiring at the same times every day, even on weekends.
  ·       Watch what and when you eat. Avoid eating heavy meals and alcohol close to bedtime. Avoid soda, tea, coffee, and chocolate  after 2 p.m.  Caffeine can stay in your system for 5 to 6 hours.
  ·   Turn out the lights. Darkness cues your body to release the natural sleep hormone melatonin, while light suppresses it. (When you get up in the morning, open the shades and curtains, letting in as much light as possible.)

If you feel so busy that you can’t get enough sleep, you might be running on constant “emergency mode,” which is a health accident waiting to happen.  And, unfortunately, it will. 

The National Sleep Foundation (NSF) has declared appropriate sleep duration times to function at your very best. For teenagers (14-17), 8-10 hours is appropriate. For young adults (18-25), sleeping for 7-9 hours is best. For adults (26-64), sleep should range from 7-9 hours as well. For older adults (65+), 7-8 hours is the optimal amount.

If you're trying to slim down or shape up, hitting the sack is just as important as sweating at the gym. As a matter of fact, you probably won’t go to the gym if you are tired.

So, go to bed already!