Sleep may make you fat

Bad news for anyone struggling to get enough sleep…

If you’re sleep deprived, you’re likely to eat more food and the extra calories you take in as a result can lead to weight gain and obesity, warn researchers.

Researchers from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, discovered that a sleep-deprived group of volunteers, who on average slept for an hour and 20 minutes less than a control group, ate an extra 549 calories on average each day.

At the same time, the amount of energy used for daily activities didn’t change significantly between the two groups, suggesting those who slept for less time each night didn’t even burn any additional calories.

The study suggests the importance of a good night’s sleep when trying to stick to a healthy eating regime.

“Sleep deprivation is a growing problem, with 28 per cent of adults now reporting that they get six or fewer hours of sleep per night,” said co-investigator of the study, Andrew D. Calvin, cardiology fellow and assistant professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic.

“We tested whether lack of sleep altered the levels of the hormones leptin and ghrelin, increased the amount of food people ate, and affected energy burned through activity,” added Virend Somers, study author and professor of medicine and cardiovascular disease at the Mayo Clinic.

They found that the participant’s lack of sleep was associated with increased leptin and decreased ghrelin, both of which are connected to appetite.

The researchers point out that while the study would seem to suggest sleep deprivation could be a preventable component of weight gain, the study was too small to provide conclusive proof.

The research involved only 17 healthy men and women and lasted just eight nights.

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