Health Habits

improve your health, habit by habit

Posts Tagged ‘sleep’

Lack of Sleep = Weight Gain

June 8th, 2009

Did you get 8 hours of sleep last night?

According to some new research, sleep restriction results in:

Decreased appetite
Decreased food cravings
Decreased food consumption, and

Increased bodyweight

What???

Sleep less…Eat Less…Weigh more???

The Science

The study involved 92 healthy individuals (52 male) between the ages of 22 and 45 years who participated in laboratory controlled sleep restriction. Subjects underwent two nights of baseline sleep (10 hours in bed per night), five nights of sleep restriction and varying recovery for four nights. Nine well rested participants served as controls. Food consumption was ad libitum (subjects had three regular meals per day and access to healthy snacks, and during nights of sleep restriction subjects were given a small sandwich at one a.m.).

Results indicate that people whose sleep was restricted experienced an average weight gain of 1.31 kilograms (2.9 lbs) over the 11 days of the study.

Conclusions

I am sorry to say that there are no conclusions. The researchers have no idea what happened.

The researchers had hoped to see a link between sleep deprivation and an increased craving for carbs.

When that didn’t happen, they had to scramble. here’s what they came up with:

Lack of sleep may result in less activity (not measured), and
“the ability to snack for longer due to reduction in time spent asleep might have influenced the weight gain”. (and yet their measurement showed a reduction in caloric consumption)

My Conclusion/Assumption

I think that if the researchers had done some blood tests pre and post experiment, they would have seen some interesting changes.

Anyone who suffers from insomnia knows that lack of sleep has a huge impact upon both your physical and mental state of health.

I would have been curious to see the changes in levels of serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine, etc along with insulin and various other obesity related hormones/brain chemicals.

Maybe next time.

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This research was presented at the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies

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Loneliness worse for your health than smoking and obesity

February 16th, 2009

Picasso - the old guitarist

According to the research of Dr. John Cacioppo, loneliness has a major impact on your overall health – both mental and physical.

In his research, Dr. Cacioppo employed brain scans, monitoring of autonomic and neuroendocrine processes, and assays of immune function to test the influence that social connection has upon our health. His research showed how our perceptions, behavior and physiology are strongly affected by a loss of that connection.

In fact, Dr. Cacoppo’s research has shown that loneliness can cause:

an increase in your blood pressure
an increase in your level of stress and cortisol production
a negative impact on your immune system
an inability to get a good nights sleep
an increased level of depression and anxiety
an increased risk of developing Alzheimer’s Disease
a reduction in your will to exercise
an increase in your cravings for comforting foods high in processed carbohydrates
an increase in caloric consumption
an increase in alcohol consumption
an increase in the consumption of a variety of drugs…both legal and illegal, and…

a feeling of sadness that feeds upon itself, causing even more isolation and an even greater sense of loneliness.

These finding were presented by Dr. Cacioppo at the most recent conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

According to Dr. Cacioppo, “healthwise, the difference between a lonely person and a popular person was akin to “a smoker and a non-smoker”.

“That stunned all of us, myself and all my colleagues in terms of the effects it had,” he said. “It shows just how powerful it is.

“Loneliness lowers the ability to control yourself. It is really easy after a bad day to have a second scotch and a third to get some comfort.”

Dr. Cacioppo’s research has led him to believe that our need for connection can be traced back through our evolutionary roots.

In order to survive in the past, humans needed to bond to rear their children. In order to flourish, they needed to [increase their levels of altruism and cooperation].

Just as physical pain is a prompt to change behavior, such as moving a finger away from the fire, loneliness evolved as a prompt to action, signaling an ancestral need to repair the social bonds.

The problem of social isolation is likely to grow as conventional family structures die out, said Dr. Cacioppo.

People are living longer, having fewer children later in life and becoming increasingly mobile around the world.

Surveys also show that people report significantly fewer close friends and confidants than those a generation ago.

All of this adds up to more loneliness and more health problems because of that loneliness.

According to the good doctor, we need to realize that “human beings are simply far more intertwined and interdependent—physiologically as well as psychologically—than our cultural prejudices have allowed us to acknowledge”.

And if we don’t address our very real need for connection, we are risking our own psychological and physiological health.

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“If you want to go fast,” says an African proverb, “go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

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