When you are obese, you will know that it is very important for your health to lose weight and improve your fitness. You will most likely be able to reel of a list of reasons why being overweight is damaging for your wellness and wellbeing, but what you may not know is that being obese can have a devastating effect on your body’s ability to sleep. Lack of sleep and obesity are actually linked, and researchers have been finding more and more evidence that proves this in recent months.
Most people today lead very stressful lives, where they are always on the go. People work long hours, do numerous chores in their spare time, try to spend time with their families and do household duties and also try to incorporate their friends into their lives. In this kind of lifestyle, sleep is very important but research has shown that the average person only gets around six and a half hours of sleep every night.
A study that took place at the University of Chicago looked at 12 men who were in their early 20s, and the study spanned several nights. For the first two nights they were only allowed to sleep for four hours per night and after that, for the next two nights, they were allowed to sleep for 10 hours a time.
What the researchers discovered was quite remarkable. The tests showed that a lack of sleep disrupts two hormones in the human body which regulate your appetite. Leptin is the first hormone, and it is the one that tells the brain when it is time to eat. Ghrelin is the other one and this hormone triggers the hunger reflex in the body. The study showed quite clearly that when the subjects of the study had a reduced amount of sleep, the hormones in their body were reduced significantly, meaning that they ate too often.