Scientists propose to use healthy sleep in the fight against obesity

This is stated in an article published in the authoritative scientific journal JAMA Internal Medicine. Scientists insist that the promotion of healthy sleep should be included in the concept of combating the epidemic of the 21st century – obesity.

It is assumed that the obesity epidemic coincides with the trend towards reduced sleep duration that has been observed in society over the past few decades. For example, a third of the US population does not sleep the recommended 7-9 hours a day. Ample evidence suggests that regular sleep of less than 7 hours per night is associated with adverse health effects.

Until now, it has been known that short sleep duration is a risk factor for obesity. Short-term experimental laboratory studies have shown that sleep restriction in healthy individuals is associated with an increase in average food intake of about 250-350 kcal per day with little or no change in energy expenditure.

But whether increasing sleep duration could reduce this risk remained unknown. A team of scientists at the University of Chicago decided to fill this gap and conducted a study among 80 overweight adults (from 21 to 40 years old) with habitual sleep of less than 6.5 hours per night.

The doctors gave the subjects advice on sleep hygiene, which they had to follow. For four weeks, people slept 7.5 hours a day (sleep duration was monitored using special home gadgets). Bottom line: all participants in the experiment reduced their daily food intake by about 270 kcal compared to the control group.

Although the researchers described the weight loss in the extended sleep group as “modest,” it was mainly due to lean mass. If sleep is extended for longer periods, weight loss in the form of fat mass is likely to increase over time, the authors of the work say. Some observations show that 7 to 8 hours of sleep per night is associated with greater success in weight loss activities.

“These results suggest that increasing and maintaining adequate sleep can lead to weight loss and be an effective intervention in obesity prevention and weight loss programs,” the scientists concluded.

“People weren’t put on a diet, they weren’t forced to run or swing. They just started sleeping more, and that was enough to make them less hungry during the day. Just in case, 270 kcal is a lot. If you keep such a deficit constantly, you can pretty quickly lose weight, and if you add sports, then still remain beautiful and fit.The fact that this is not an accidental result is confirmed by the opposite, so to speak, studies in which, on the contrary, the participants were not allowed to sleep.The result – plus 253 kcal daily “, – says the famous biologist Irina Yakutenko.

According to her, the magical effect has a completely understandable explanation: “When you don’t get enough sleep, you don’t feel well, the body feels constant discomfort, and this, from the point of view of the brain, means that the current situation is unfavorable. It begins to demand that the stupid owner of the brain improve situation – but the question is how the brain will understand that it worked? It will understand this by reducing the discomfort, which will be expressed in the easing of unpleasant sensations. If you do not get enough sleep, then the discomfort is obviously removed by sleep, but you are sitting in the office or doing household chores and you can’t sleep.

However, there is a trick: you can disguise the fact that there are unpleasant sensations by giving the brain pleasant ones. And where is the fastest and easiest way to get them, especially if you are sleepy and your energy is at zero? That’s right, food. Food is a guaranteed source of pleasurable sensations, and chronically sleep-deprived citizens constantly overeat, especially if they are forced to do something boring and / or unpleasant, which further increases the desire to pick up pleasant sensations somewhere. Of course, constant sleep deprivation reinforces all impulsive actions aimed at finding and getting pleasure: here and immoderate drinking, and risky sexual adventures, and binge watching TV shows. It’s just that food is the most common of them.”

Some Internet users suggest that the reason is that a person who sleeps more simply has less time to eat. In addition, since he spends less energy in his sleep, he needs less food. In this case, the time of wakefulness decreased by 5%, and the consumption of food – by 10% “I just lost weight during a long sleep because there was no time to eat,” says one woman on the network.

But doctors have a more prosaic explanation. “The fact is that during sleep, extremely important metabolic regulation processes also occur. Many hormones are produced that regulate fat and carbohydrate metabolism. During healthy sleep, a person sleeps and loses weight, if there are sleep disorders, he gains weight. Unfortunately, this moment often remains “behind the scenes” when it comes to the fight against excess weight. It is often impossible to normalize weight only with proper nutrition, movement, resistance to stress. In case of disturbed sleep, weight, as a rule, steadily grows or does not decrease, “says a cardiologist, somnologist, therapist, member of the Russian Society of Cardiology Ekaterina Plemyannikova.

The breakdown of fats in the body occurs only during the stage of deep sleep. “Some people who dream of losing weight sleep superficially, they don’t even go into the deep stage of sleep. And no matter how much effort they make about weight loss, they will not succeed until they can overcome insomnia. If they do not start sleeping in the deep stage, they will only continue to gain weight, ”says somnologist Margarita Smirnova.

During the day, carbohydrate metabolism predominates in the body, and fat metabolism at night. We do not eat at night, so we extract glucose from fat, which we store during the day, to maintain the functioning of the brain. Growth hormone controls this process, it helps to extract fats from reserves. It activates the growth hormone melatonin, the peak of its synthesis falls on the interval from 12 o’clock at night to 3-4 o’clock in the morning.

With poor-quality sleep, circadian rhythms are shifted, the natural rhythm of hormone production is disturbed and, accordingly, the breakdown of fat at night. On average, it is possible to burn about 30 g of fat per night. If a person sleeps intermittently, goes to bed late, then, for example, only 20 grams are burned, and we put the remaining 10 grams on a shelf …

With regular lack of sleep, even those people who eat right and devote time to physical activity, slowly, but still get better. If a person does not gain the required number of hours of sleep for a long time, sleeps restlessly, anxiously, the hormonal balance shifts, which entails a change in carbohydrate metabolism, thyroid function, water-salt metabolism, and protein synthesis.

Therefore, along with a healthy diet and regular physical activity, the habit of healthy sleep should be included in public propaganda, the authors of the new study note.