Saturday, February 25, 2012

Reduced sleep makes you overeat.....

This fits in with a lot of the studies I'd had before about the way in which lack of sleep can contribute to obesity....through messing up your brain and how it reacts to desires for  food.  Also it fits in with Stephan's work on food reward.

Sleep restriction leads to increased activation of brain regions sensitive to food stimuli.

RESULTS
Overall neuronal activity in response to food stimuli was greater after restricted sleep than after habitual sleep. In addition, a relative increase in brain activity in areas associated with reward, including the putamen, nucleus accumbens, thalamus, insula, and prefrontal cortex in response to food stimuli, was observed.
CONCLUSIONS:
The findings of this study link restricted sleep and susceptibility to food stimuli and are consistent with the notion that reduced sleep may lead to greater propensity to overeat.

2 comments:

js290 said...

Is this really the first order effect in overeating, though?

robrob said...

I would think whatever stress that is robbing one of proper sleep would be the culprit as you release stress hormones that burn out your sugar reserves and pour it from the liver. this alone can triggor hunger.

I speak from experience, I suffer metabolic syndrome and havent slept through the night well for a very long time. I will sleep about 6 hours and wake up and get all nervous and jittery then very hungry!

eating makes me calm down and go back to sleep. I think the obesity comes first in most cases. obesity is simply a sign of malnutrtion especially in our day where people are totally afraid of caloires, fat and sugar. which translates into fear of eating period because of the getting fat fear.

rose