Alternative Health Blog

Some of the newest and most welcome sleep research indicates that getting enough slumber can help your build muscle and burn fat. Hmm, sounds good, sleep more and shed the pounds. What’s more, other studies show that even “partial sleep deprivation” can lead to an increased appetite for both more overall calories and more empty-calorie foods such as candy and cookies.

The esteemed University of Chicago sleep lab performed the appetite study. Volunteer subjects (all healthy young men) who slept only four hours per night for just two nights experienced an 18 percent reduction in leptin, the brain hormone that tells the body to stop eating. Plus, the subjects’ ghrelin levels increased 28 percent, on average, in the same two nights. Ghrelin is a hormone that leads us to feel hungry.

(Yeah, know what you are thinking…man, my ghrelin level is high right now...at least, mine always seems to be, especially when blogging.)

All this hormonal activity led the men in the study to report more hunger, roughly 25 percent greater than before the two sleep-deprived nights, and there was a distinct upturn in cravings for sweets, salty foods and starches such as breads and pastas.

As a result, a growing number of sleep researchers do not consider it coincidence that the obesity epidemic in this country has been accompanied by the typical U.S. adult getting two hours less sleep per night, on average, compared to 1960. In that time, the percentage of young American adults getting less than seven hours per night zoomed from 15 percent to nearly 40 percent.

The obesity numbers? In 1960, about a quarter of all Americans were overwight and one in nine was considered obese or at least 20 percent heavier than a healthy weight. Now two of every three adults are classified as overweight and one of three is obese.

While it is not a direct cause-and-effect relationship, studies show that people who sleep less are more likely to be overweight. In fact, sleeping four hours or less per night puts a person at 73 percent greater risk than seven- to eight-hour sleepers. Sleep’s roles as a weight-control strategy and natural appetite suppressant are becoming undeniable.

Bob Condor blogs for Alternative Health Journal every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday.