You Are How You Sleep
Bottom Line: We’re all familiar with the saying that we are what we eat. As we’ve previously discussed, there’s a lot of science behind that line of thinking. But if we more or less are what we eat...what influences what we eat you might say is how we are what we are. In a research article written for The Conversation, a neurologist with the University of Pittsburgh tied together lots of research related to sleep that ties back to what it is that we’ll typically eat.
We all know that if we’re sleep deprived our decision making tends to be compromised. And by compromised, I mean it’s when we tend to give in to cravings and other things that intellectually we know may not be in our best interests but that seem to be just the thing that sounds best at that particular moment in time. What the research shows is that the reason you have those cravings in the first place is a chemical reaction taking place in your body when you’re short of sleep.
For the average adult sleeping five hours or less in a night (which is less than your body needs to restore itself) your brain produces stress hormones. Left unchecked (meaning getting on with your day in a sleep deprived way), those stress hormones convert to cravings to attempt to compensate for what your body wasn’t able to rejuvenate. The result is strong hunger cravings for calorie-dense foods. Notably this happens within just one night. As was monitored in studies, just one night of sleep deprivation influences the chemical makeup of what your body is releasing and doing by 25%. That’s a number that becomes greater overtime if left unaddressed.
The point of this is two-fold. First, we all know getting a good night’s sleep is important. Second, about half of society is at least occasionally sleep deprived, a third of society is regularly sleep deprived. As the author notes: Sleep is not a luxury. It is your most powerful tool for appetite control, energy regulation and long-term health. And on that note consider this... Currently over 100 million Americans are on a diet for the purpose of trying to lose weight. How many realize that the most important first step is getting a good night’s sleep?