Sleep loss and weight gain

You might be reading about the relationship between sleep and weight gain. There was an article in USAToday on Dec. 6. This is the URL of a summary of an article which appeared in the Annals of Internal Medicine. “Brief Communication: Sleep Curtailment in Healthy Young Men Is Associated with Decreased Leptin Levels, Elevated Ghrelin Levels, and Increased Hunger and Appetite. Brief Communication: Sleep Curtailment in Healthy Young Men Is Associated with Decreased Leptin Levels, Elevated Ghrelin Levels, and Increased Hunger and Appetite.” Karine Spiegel, Esra Tasali, Plamen Penev, and Eve Van Cauter. Annals 2004 141: 846-850.

Medscape reports: “In an accompanying editorial, Jeffrey S. Flier, MD, and Joel K. Elmquist, DVM, PhD, from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts, wonder if controlled studies should be designed to measure the effect of sleep-promoting interventions on appetite and body weight. However, they note that this study does not prove a cause-effect relationship between the hormone levels and hunger and dietary intake. Other factors, such as cortisol or orexin, may affect sleep and body weight regulation.

"If the findings prove to be reproducible and generalizable, and the hormonal changes of leptin and ghrelin due to sleep curtailment cause changes in food intake over time, we might add sleep duration to the environmental factors that are prevalent in our society and that contribute to weight gain and obesity," the authors write.

"Although recommendations to get both a better night's sleep and more exercise might superficially seem to be at odds with each other from the perspective of energy expenditure and energy balance, these simple goals may well become a part of our future approach to combating obesity." “(Medscape)