Lose sleep, gain weight

Not getting your full seven or eight hours sleep every night could make you put on weight.  Even six weeks of not getting enough sleep can result in a small weight gain.

People who lost around 80 minutes of sleep a night put on 1lb (0.45 kg) by the end of the six-week trial period.  Not a lot, say researchers at Columbia University Irving Medical Centre, but this could quickly add up if sleep deprivation became a long-term problem, and could even lead to diabetes and heart problems.

The mechanism isn’t clear.  There doesn’t seem to be a direct causal relationship between insomnia and weight gain, and so the reason could be more prosaic: poor sleepers are too tired in the day to exercise or be active, and they may also be more attracted to sugar-laden ‘comfort’ foods as feelgood compensations.

The behaviour has been seen in people with bad insomnia and who sleep for no more than four hours a night; they are much more likely to overeat and eat the sugary foods that cause weight gain.

But the same thing can happen to people who lose just an hour or so of sleep every night.  The weight gain still happens, but on a much slower rate, the researchers say.

They tested the idea on 95 volunteers who usually slept seven or eight hours a night.  They were all asked to go to bed 90 minutes later each night, and they were less active during the day; general inactivity increased by 30 minutes each day.

In an earlier study of the same group, women who lost around 80 minutes sleep each night started to show insulin resistance, an early sign of type 2 diabetes, by the end of the six weeks.

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