How Sleep Loss Adds to Weight Gain

[microrobert]

How Sleep Loss Adds to Weight Gain

Losing sleep tends to make people eat more and gain weight, and now a new study suggests that one reason may be the impact that sleep deprivation has on the brain.

The research showed that depriving people of sleep for one night created pronounced changes in the way their brains responded to high-calorie junk foods. On days when the subjects had not had proper sleep, fattening foods like potato chips and sweets stimulated stronger responses in a part of the brain that helps govern the motivation to eat. But at the same time, the subjects experienced a sharp reduction in activity in the frontal cortex, a higher-level part of the brain where consequences are weighed and rational decisions are made.

The findings suggested that one unfortunate result of sleep loss is this “double hit” in brain activity, said Matthew P. Walker, an author of the study and a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley. A sleepy brain appears to not only respond more strongly to junk food, but also has less ability to rein that impulse in.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/0...ght-gain/?_r=0

[Corvus]

Thats true, sleep is very underrated, also many people try to compensate lack of energy due to shortage of sleep by eating lots of suger and fat which ultimatly leads to overweight