Scientists have indicated that sleep deprivation can lead to weight gain. Missing out on a night’s sleep leads the body’s metabolism to slow down, which means that less energy, in the form of calories, is burnt off.
Previous studies have linked sleep deprivation to an increase in hunger-related hormones during waking hours.
“Our findings show that one night of sleep deprivation acutely reduces energy expenditure in healthy men, which suggests sleep contributes to the active regulation of daytime energy expenditure in humans,” the Daily Mail quoted Christian Benedict, who led the research at Uppsala University in Sweden.
Benedict and his colleagues put 14 male students through a series of sleep `conditions` – curtailed sleep, no sleep, and normal sleep – over several days, then measured changes in how much they ate, their blood sugar, hormone levels and metabolic rate.
Even a single night of missed sleep slowed metabolism the next morning, reducing energy expenditure for tasks such as breathing and digestion between five percent and 20 percent.
Boston Medical Centre Sleep Disorders Center Head Sanford Auerbach pointed out that sleep deprivation was a complex issue, with medication and other issues influencing sleep, and urged that the new findings be kept in context.
“They showed that we adapt to sleep deprivation and that some of these adaptations could theoretically contribute to obesity,” he said, adding that it was not clear how chronic sleep loss influenced hormone levels.
