|
New Year's Weight Loss |
|
|
|
|
|
If you are like millions of other Americans, your number one New Year's Resolution is probably to lose weight; however, whether you succeed or not may depend on how much good sleep you get each night. According to recent studies published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and the Lancet, sleep loss tends to increase hunger and affects the body's metabolism making it difficult to maintain weight loss or lose weight.
A hormone called cortisol which controls appetite has been shown to be affected by sleep loss. This causes you to still feel hungry despite the fact that you have consumed an adequate amount of food. Other ways that sleep loss affects your ability to lose and maintain weight loss include:
- Interference with carbohydrate metabolism which may cause high blood glucose levels.
- Excess amounts of glucose encourages the overproduction of insulin which leads to the storage of excess body fat, as well as lead to insulin resistance (a significant sign of adult-onset diabetes.
According to Michael Thorpy, MD, director of the Sleep-Wake Disorders Center at Montefiore Medical Center in New York, "Sleep loss is associated with striking alterations in hormone levels that regulate the appetite and may be a contributing factor to obesity. Any American making a resolution to lose weight in the New Year should probably consider a parallel commitment for getting more sleep."
An estimated 40 percent of Americans promise to lose weight in the New Year; however, almost 90 percent of those who responded to a nationwide survey reported either occasional or no success losing weight. In fact, nearly half of the respondents reported losing very little weight or, unfortunately, gaining weight instead.
How Sleep Loss Affects Body Weight
Not only does quanity of sleep affect weight, loss of sleep quality can also affect your weight. An example of this is seen in the fact that decreased amounts of restorative deep or slow-wave sleep have been associated with significantly reduced levels of growth hormone. Growth hormone is a protein that helps the body regulate the proportions of fat and muscle in adults.
"Sleep loss disrupts a complex and interwoven series of metabolic and hormonal processes and may be a contributing factor to obesity," said John Winkelman, MD, Ph.D., medical director of the Sleep Health Center at Brigham and Women's Hospital and assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. "What most people do not realize is that better sleep habits may be instrumental to the success of any weight management plan."
Sleeplessness in America
Are you getting enough sleep? If you are not, you are not alone. According to a poll sponsored by the National Sleep Foundation, only 30 percent of adults reported getting eight or more hours of sleep on weeknights; while 52 percent reported getting eight or more hours of sleep on weekend nights. For many of you, this lack of adequate sleep may be elective in order to increase your work or free time. A majority of respondents to the poll also suffer from sleep disorders which affect both the quantify and quality of their sleep. Almost three quarters (74 percent) experienced at least one symptom of a sleep disorder on two or more nights each week. Insomnia was defined as having any one of the following symptoms:
- difficulty falling asleep
- waking often during the night
- waking up to early in the morning and being unable to go back to sleep
- waking up in the morning feeling unrested
Over half (58 percent) of the poll respondents reported at least one symptom of insomnia on two or more nights of the week.
"People who experience sleep disturbances for more than a few weeks should see their doctor," said Thorpy. "In addition to making behavioral and lifestyle modifications, there are newer prescription sleep medications that can help individuals fall asleep quickly and increase their total sleep time with minimal next-day effects."
Next page > Sleep Tips to Help With Weight Loss > Page 1, 2
Source: PR Newswire
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
