One Hour Of Extra Sleep Provides The Obese With Calorie Deficit

As evidence continues to mount around the link between poor or insufficient sleep and the risk of obesity and metabolic disorders, a group of researchers in the US has seen fit to explore the flip side of this equation, Nick Lavars reported recently for New Atlas.

Photo Insert: Extend sleep and eating fewer calories can really help people trying to lose weight

The scientists have found that extending the nightly sleep duration of overweight subjects can lead to a significant reduction in daily calorie intake, so much so it could drive significant weight loss if the pattern was sustained over the long term.

A growing list of studies have shed light on the way sleep loss or irregular sleep can drive weight gain in humans, illustrating how it can lead to metabolic alterations at a tissue level and drive metabolic dysfunction.

A study from October last year also showed how an extra hour's sleep for newborns can help lower their obesity risk during the formative months of life.

“Over the years, we and others have shown that sleep restriction has an effect on appetite regulation that leads to increased food intake, and thus puts you at risk for weight gain over time,” said lead investigator Esra Tasali from the University of Chicago Medicine.

The study also involved researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and explored this question via a randomized clinical trial involving 80 adults. These subjects were overweight and had habitually short sleep duration, of less than 6.5 hours a night, a recognized risk factor for obesity.

The idea was to investigate whether extending their sleep duration could mitigate this risk, with the subjects taking part in a four-week study, the first two weeks of which were used to gather baseline information on sleep and caloric intake.

“In our earlier work, we understood that sleep is important for appetite regulation,” said Tasali.

“Now we’ve shown that in real life, without making any other lifestyle changes, you can extend your sleep and eat fewer calories. This could really help people trying to lose weight.” The research was published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.

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