Community Corner
How is Your Sleep? Are You Getting Enough?
Our dietician looks at how sleep impacts your overall health.
For many people getting enough sleep remains a constant battle. With longer business days, demands of children schedules, finishing college semesters and simply the desire to do more in a day, more and more people are sleeping less and this might be impacting what they eat and their weight.
A variety of studies are looking, or have looked at, the issue of sleep and weight, and while the research is still early stage it does seem to indicate that the less you sleep, the more likely it is that you are not eating properly and that you are overweight.
In a recent study in the journal Metabolism, researchers found that even a 90 minute reduction in your sleep can contribute to changes in the hormones that trigger feelings of satiety causing people to eat more.
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Another study, in the Annals of Internal Medicine, compared how overweight and obese adults did when they either had 5.5 hours or 8.5 hours of sleep each night; the subjects also consumed a diet that had similar calorie restrictions. Initially both groups lost weight but after 14 days those who slept 5.5 hours had lost 55 percent less of their body fat mass than did those who slept longer.
So how do these, and several other studies, affect how you should look at the amount of sleep you get? First, these studies are still developing the full picture about the connection between sleep and weight but early indications are that if you consistently get less than 6 hours of sleep a night, you are likely at risk for weight gain.
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Second, more studies are needed to conclusively determine how much sleep is needed to keep satiety hormones functioning. And finally, sleep is just one part of the puzzle. If you are making poor food choices while you are up more hours this will definitely impact weight and weight gain.
Take some time to look at your sleep routine and assess if you can make changes to get more sleep. If you are staying up too late, think about what you might choose to eat during that time so that you are keeping calories in mind.