You’ll eat better if you sleep better

Sleep deprivation definitely upsets your physiology – which can cause fuzzy thinking and put you on the path to adding extra layers of fat to your thighs, as well as cardiovascular troubles.

But the metabolic upsets may begin with a far more simple problem. Lack of sleep leaves you too tired to eat properly.

Undergraduate living ain’t easy

Researchers from City University of New York, wondered if the connection between obesity and sleep deprivation could boil down to, sleep deprived people just being too tired to care.

To test out their theory, they roped in a bunch of undergraduate students and peeked into their hectic lives. The group included 9 girls and 12 guys.

Each student was issued with a diary. The student was asked to record their frenzied student existence, in terms of how many hours of zees they actually caught each night and what they ate each day, for a period of 7 days.

Running on empty

Being a student is harder work than you might imagine. Sleep was often problematic.

Two factors contributed to the student’s sleep issues.

Burning the midnight oil to complete assignments and prepare for tests and exams, left many short on total sleep time
Tossing and turning , due to worrying about all the school work that had not been completed, caused many students to have issues with sleep latency and awakenings

In short, many of the undergrads were running on empty, in terms of sleep.

Too tired to eat properly

The idea that students are inherently sleep deprived, is not new, but what makes this study interesting is, the researchers analyzed what each individual was eating, alongside their sleep patterns.

The more sleep deprived individuals were not only sleeping less, they were eating “out” more often too. Since eating “out” on a student budget doesn’t happen at a gourmet restaurant, eating “out” adds up to filling up on junk food.

The reason junk food prevails in the sleep deprived – it takes too much effort to pull together something in the kitchen, back home.

Double jeopardy ?

Home cooked meals tend to be a little more healthy than the grab in a bag type meals, served by fast food joints.

Bad eating, PLUS bad sleeping, on a long term basis, is a recipe for bad health. Oh dear ! Studying is good for the brain and bad for the body. LOL.

You are how you sleep

Poor sleep is increasingly associated with the dreaded diseases : cancer, heart attacks, stroke and diabetes.

We often hear the saying, you are what you eat. But since what you eat, is often related to how well you sleep – maybe it is time for new mantra…………….

You are how you sleep !

Sleep problems may affect a person’s diet – abstract that will be presented at the 21st Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies (APSS).

Interested in learning more about the chemistry behind those extra fat layers ?

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