Sleep Deprivation Could Affect Your Waistline

In order to increase awareness on the negative impact of poor sleep on health, scientists have alerted the global community that too little sleep may contribute to a larger waistline.
These findings are published in the ‘European Journal of Clinical Nutrition’ on November 2. According to the researchers, sleep deprivation didn’t have a significant effect on how many calories people burned.
That means those with sleep deprivation had a net gain of 385 calories a day, the researchers said. However, people with too little sleep had higher fat and lower protein intake than those who got enough sleep, but both groups had similar carbohydrate intake.
Sleep plays an important role in the physical health of humans. For example, sleep is involved in healing and repair of the heart and blood vessels. Ongoing sleep deficiency is linked to an increased risk of heart disease, kidney disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and stroke.
Similarly, studies show that a good night’s sleep improves learning. Whether one is learning mathematics, how to play the piano, how to perfect golf swing, or how to drive a car, sleep helps enhance learning and problem-solving skills.
Sleep also helps individuals to pay attention, make decisions, and be creative. The new research included 11 studies with a total of 172 participants. Compared to those who got enough sleep, those who were sleep-deprived consumed an average of 385 more calories a day.
That’s equal to the calories in about four and a half slices of bread. Reacting to the development, Senior Study Author, Gerda Pot, who is with the Diabetes and Nutritional Sciences Division at King’s College London and Vrije University in Amsterdam, said:
“The main cause of obesity is an imbalance between calorie intake and expenditure and this study adds to accumulating evidence that sleep deprivation could contribute to this imbalance. So, there may be some truth in the saying ‘early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy and wise.”