Sleep can foster healthier eating habits, sleeplessness is one of the lifestyle factors that can contribute to obesity. For the study, researchers led by Wendy Hall, from the department of nutritional sciences at King's College, recruited 42 people who habitually got less than seven hours of sleep a night.
Half of the people received a 45-minute personalized sleep consultation, which provided them with tips to improve their sleep. The goal was to extend their sleep by as much as an hour and a half each night. The other half received no advice and served as the control group.
All participants were equipped with a wrist-worn motion sensor that kept track of how much they slept each night, as well as the amount of time they spent in bed before falling asleep. They also kept food diaries to track what they ate. Sleep and diet were monitored for a week. Nearly 9 in 10 of the people who received advice increased their sleep time during the week. No significant changes in sleep patterns occurred among those in the control group.
Those who got more sleep wound up with a 10-gram reduction in their daily intake of added sugars, the researchers found. But over time those added sugars can add up, especially if sleeplessness also keeps a person from being more active in their daily life. Sleeplessness could influence a person's food choices-hunger-dampening hormone called leptin which is secreted when people enter the deeper stages of sleep, lack of sleep could mean that people's appetites are instead being driven by ghrelin, which is known as the "hunger hormone.''
People with insomnia tend to develop a lack of inhibition due to their sleeplessness, it becomes harder to resist certain foods and other things. For sound sleep, avoid caffeine and alcohol about four to six hours before bedtime, eat a moderate amount in the evening, so you don't go to bed too full or too hungry.
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