Want to lose weight sleeping? Try to extend your sleep time so you don’t get deprived of it.
That’s the surprising result of a randomized trial that asked overweight young adults who normally slept less than six and a half hours to try to get about eight and a half hours of sleep a night for two weeks.
At the end of that short period of time, many of those who extended sleep to a healthier duration had lowered their caloric intake by an average of 270 calories a day, according to the study published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine on Monday.
Some of the study participants reduced their intake by 500 calories a day, according to the study.
“This is almost like a game-changer for weight loss or weight maintenance,” said study author Dr. Esra Tasali, an associate professor of medicine who directs the University of Chicago Sleep Research Center.
The researchers projected their findings into the future. They found that eating 270 fewer calories a day would translate to a loss of 26 pounds over three years, all while doing nothing but getting more sleep.
“A small intervention that you can do on yourself to increase or preserve sleep duration so you’re not sleep deprived can have a significant impact on healthy weight,” Tasali said.
One of the strengths of the study was that it took place in a real-world setting, not a sleep lab, and used an objective urine test to measure calories rather than relying on people to remember what they ate.
“This is a very well done study, answering an important question,” said Dr. Bhanuprakash Kolla, a sleep psychiatrist and neurologist at the Center for Sleep Medicine and the Division of Addiction Medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. He did not participate in the study.
“They clearly showed that as you increase the amount of sleep, energy intake is reduced and that, in turn, leads to modest reductions in weight,” Kolla said. “It is likely that if this were extended, there could be more significant changes in weight.”
Sleep and hunger are related
How does getting more sleep help you lose weight? One reason is the impact that lack of sleep has on two key hormones that control hunger and satiety: ghrelin and leptin.
Ghrelin stimulates hunger and has been shown to increase with sleep deprivation. Its partner, leptin, tells us when we are full.
“Leptin has been shown to decrease with sleep restriction. So when we are sleep deprived, we have less of this hormone and therefore less of a brake on our appetite,” Kolla said.
And it’s not just people who are overweight who are craving carbs and gain weight when they’re sleep deprived, said Kristen Knutson, an associate professor of sleep and preventive medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, who doesn’t was involved in the study.
“Studies that have seen increased appetite after sleep loss have been in people who were not overweight. Getting enough sleep has health benefits for everyone, regardless of body weight,” Knutson said.
Another way in which poor sleep affects our food choices can be found in the brain’s reward centers, the place that gives us pleasurable feelings that we want to repeat.
“The reward centers in the brain are more activated when you are sleep deprived, which increases your craving for carbohydrates, unhealthy foods or a higher overall food intake,” Tasali said.
Then there’s the problem of insulin resistance, which increases with sleep deprivation and leads to weight gain.
“Several laboratory studies have shown that if you did a sugar tolerance test in the morning for a sleep-deprived individual versus a well-rested individual, you would see a pre-diabetic, insulin-resistant state in the morning,” Tasali said.
an easy intervention
How difficult was it for people to add more sleep to their lives? Not that difficult, Tasali said. Each person underwent an hour-long counseling session about their sleep style.
“It was very personalized, focused on trying to review people’s lifestyles, their work-related limitations, their family members, their pets, children and bedtime routines,” she said. “So we talked to them about how to improve sleep hygiene, how to put away electronics before bed.”
Sleep experts advise that any device that emits blue light — smartphones, laptops and televisions, to name a few — be put away 45 minutes to an hour before bed. This is because blue light interrupts the release of melatonin, the body’s sleep hormone.
Other sleep hygiene tips include sleeping in a cool room (15 to 20 degrees Celsius); without noise; skipping spicy food and alcohol before bed; and having a calming bedtime ritual, which may include taking a hot bath, reading a book, listening to soft music, deep breathing, yoga, meditation, or light stretching.
Tasali said she saw changes after just one week of the two-week sleep improvement program.
“Some of them told me, ‘I thought it was going to be less productive. You’re giving me so much time in bed, how am I supposed to do all this work I’m supposed to do?’ And at the end of the two weeks they told me they were more productive because they were more energized and more alert.”
One of the limitations of the study, Kolla said, is that none of the participants suffered from insomnia or other major sleep disorders, which affect millions of people.
“These are just individuals who don’t have sleep disorders but have what we would call behavior-induced insufficient sleep,” he said. “Although the goal was to extend it to 8.5 hours, it’s quite likely that most people don’t need that much sleep. Therefore, future work should analyze specific information from participants to see who is likely to benefit from this type of intervention.”
Despite these limitations, he said it’s clear that people trying to lose weight should pay attention “to how much sleep they’re getting – avoiding voluntary sleep deprivation is going to play a big part in that.”
Source: CNN Brasil
