Your Weight Dips When You Sleep

Do you wish to lose weight while you sleep? Sounds like the easiest and most natural thing to do, doesn’t it?

In fact, it is the most natural thing for us humans to do, because we are designed by default to sleep at night!

Having not enough of sleep is becoming a common problem, affecting many stressful working adults, and possibly children. We know that there are some side effects attached to long-term sleep deprivation, but are we well informed about the dangers of not sleeping?

Do you know what are the potential health problems that can occur when we are not getting our required sleep time? The easiest way to tell if there is a problem is to start looking for the symptoms.

The most obvious symptom related to lack of sleep is WEIGHT GAIN!!!

Experts from different medical universities found out that….

Our fat cells need sleep to function properly. Fat cells that lack sleep are metabolically groggy. It affects the metabolism of fats in the body, thus causing the fat cells to be less sensitive to insulin. Insulin is a hormone that controls blood sugar level. And insulin insensitivity is linked to weight gain and diabetes. (from Dr. Matthew Brady of the University of Chicago, senior author of the study published Monday in Annals of Internal Medicine)

“The fact that sleep disruption is such a common issue these days, we cannot help but notice the things that this problem can do to the body – including possibly influencing our weight.” says David Rapoport, MD, associate professor and director of the Sleep Medicine Program at the New York University School of Medicine in New York City.

WHY aren’t we sleeping?

Our lifestyle in the city has changed the way we do a lot of things, including sleeping. The reason some of us are not sleeping at night is because of the amount of things we can accomplish in the night and not during the day. For example, ‘social’ time starts at night these days. Take a walk down the streets of bars and clubs and you will know what I mean.

Of course, not every night is social night… There are nights when you do not even have a choice but to stay up for something or someone. For example, cramming for finals in school; attending to a crying newborn; completing extra work brought home from the office, etc.

Logically, when you are not sleeping you are expending your energy throughout the night. And, chances of you eating at night is a lot higher when your brain, instead of shutting down, it is now secreting this hormone known as Ghrelin that stimulates appetite.

Worse, when you do not have enough sleep for a long period of time, it will cause both of your hormones leptin and ghrelin to go out of balance during those days. Both of these hormones are known as the ‘Hunger’ hormone and the ‘Fullness’ hormone. When the hormones go out of balance, your brains will send you mixed messages that you are hungry when you are not; and when you are full the brain does not receive that message.