Skinny dreams…

Illustration by Lars Wannop

Have you ever suffered from insomnia?

Every hour laying in your bed becomes eternal, you can not stop thinking of your work, you know your alarm could be ringing soon, you look at your boyfriend snoring next to you and you begin to hate him.
Did you know that you also run the risk to put on weight?
As if it was not enough, a very large study has found a surprisingly strong link between the amount of shut-eye people get and their risk of becoming obese.

“Hey, but here’s something counterintuitive!”, I thought. Didn’t you?
I believed that people who slept less consumed more calories than the ones who sleep a full night!
On the other side, I have to admit that when I could not sleep I usually spent most of the time in the kitchen.. or eating on my bed.. that is even worse!
But it’s not only because we are bored that we eat when we are awake: specialists are studying the effects of chronic sleep deprivation on the body’s food-seeking circuitry.
Sleep deprivation lowers leptin, a blood protein that suppresses appetite and seems to affect how the brain senses when the body has had enough food; but sleep deprivation also makes ghrelin (a substance that makes people want to eat) levels grow up.
So with sleep loss (4 hours per night or less), low leptin and high ghrelin can give powerful dual signals that the body has an energy deficit, thus increasing food intake.
“When they’re less sleepy, they’re less hungry,” sleep and weight-loss specialist at the University of Arizona Dr. Philip Eichling said.
My god: shadows under our eyes, headache, empty fridge, tiredness, listlessness, and… big bottom?!!
ZZZZ…

See also our previous post Love, stop snoring please.

Filed Under Food, Research