Sleep deprivation and deliberately missed sleep appears to put a drag on metabolism and makes the day drag, according to a european study it causing the body to use less energy because our body want to rest.
There is evidence that sleep loss can promote weight gain, not just by slowing the rate at which calories are burned but also boosting hunger as reported in the American journal of Clinical Nutrition.
As quoted from routers, Christian Benedict of Uppsala University in Sweden who lead the study said that “the study suggest that getting plenty of sleep might prevent weight gain”
In the journal he wrote, “Our findings show that one night of sleep deprivation acutely reduces energy expenditure in healthy men, which suggests sleep contributes to the acute regulation of daytime energy expenditure in humans”
Previous studies have linked sleep deprivation with weight gain and also shown how disrupted sleep also disrupts levels of stress- and hunger-related hormones during waking hours.
Lack of sleep can also lower levels of concentration, Affect to the skin health, easy to forget, and in the long run can cause several diseases.
Benedict and friends put 14 male university student through a series of sleep “conditions” to help identify the exact mechanism by which a lack of sleep might have these effects.
The students undergo normal sleep, curtailed sleep and no sleep over several days, then Benedict measured changes their blood sugar, how much they ate, hormone levels and other indicators.
Compared with the morning after a good night’s sleep, they found that even a single night of missed sleep reducing energy expenditure for task like digestion and breathing by 5-20% and slowed metabolism the next morning.
Another indicator that appears, the young men also had higher morning levels of stress hormones such as cortisol, higher blood sugar, and appetite-regulating hormone such as ghrelin after sleep disruption.
Still, the sleep loss did not boost the amount of food the men consumed during the day.
A number of studies have observed that people who sleep five hours or less are more prone to weight gain and weigh-related diseases such as type 2 diabetes. But those studies do not prove that sleep loss causes weight gain.
Experts said that factors such as lifestyle and diet might add to obesity risks and that it was not clear that sleep deprivation led to obesity.
Sanford Auerbach, head of the Sleep Disorders Center at Boston Medical Center, noted that sleep deprivation is a complex issue, with medication and other issues influencing sleep as well, and urged that the new findings be kept in context.
“They showed that we adapt to sleep deprivation and that some of these adaptations could theoretically contribute to obesity,” he said, adding that it’s not clear how chronic sleep loss influences hormone levels.
The National Sleep Foundation recommends that adults get about seven to nine hours of sleep each night.
make it a habit to sleep every night on scheduled and if for some reason you reduce your sleep time, naps will be able to make you more fresh and restore your energy.