Sleep problems and metabolic disorders

After we explained to you in the last article how lack of sleep and the occurrence of mental disorders can be linked, here is the next article, how sleep problems are linked to metabolic disorders can have. This connection also makes sense, as the body has the necessary rest for digestive processes and the stabilization of the fat balance during sleep. These tasks can only be performed inadequately if the body's resting phase is disrupted. We will explain this to you in this article, why sleep problems are linked to food cravings, diabetes or the onset of a fatty liver.

Lack of sleep can cause food cravings

After a long night with little sleep, you often crave sweets and fatty foods. We'll briefly explain why this is the case: there are two hormones that regulate appetite: Leptin and ghrelin.

Leptin lowers appetite, but can also increase it, while ghrelin lowers it. Leptin is produced in the body's fat cells and informs the brain that enough energy reserves are available. Leptin decreases with weight loss and light fasting. The task of leptin is to signal a threat to the body and can therefore arouse a feeling of hunger. It is assumed that a lack of sleep has similar consequences. It can therefore be assumed that good sleep and adequate sleep are linked, but the details of this hormone and human sleep are less clear.

In experiments with animals and humans, it has been found that sleep deprivation has led to decreased leptin levels and increased ghrelin levels, resulting in increased appetite. In young men with sleep deprivation, leptin and ghrelin levels were found to be 18% lower, resulting in a 23% increase in appetite compared to the hormone levels found during healthy sleep.

Insomnia leads to an increase in ghelin and a decrease in leptin. Ghelin, the hormone that increases appetite, is increased, while the balancing effect of leptin decreases. In practice, this means that we often wake up after a bad night with a feeling of ravenous hunger. Participants in scientific studies were more likely to spend more money on food after a night of poor sleep. Therefore, cravings can be the result of a bad night's sleep. [1]

Lack of sleep and obesity

However, there are also connections between the leptin concentration in the body and the excessive body mass index in some people. This low leptin deficiency could explain the problems of some overweight people, such as increased appetite. Scientific studies have indicated that a reduced leptin level could also lead to secondary diseases such as obesity and type II diabetes melitus in the long term. Further research is certainly needed in this area, but it can be said that getting enough restful sleep also promotes healthy appetite regulation.

So what about obesity and eating disorders caused by a lack of sleep? People who sleep less than 6 hours a night are at risk of having an increased body mass index. The risk of obesity increases by 73% in people who sleep four hours or less a night. Why is that?

The connection is that lack of sleep leads to tiredness and sluggishness and therefore to less physical activity during the day. On the one hand, physical activity helps you to rest more easily in the evening and sleep better, creating a vicious circle. In addition, restless nights cause the body to release the stress hormone cortisol, which is responsible, among other things, for the accumulation of fat in the abdomen.

This fat is particularly unfavorable because it in turn puts a strain on the metabolism. Patients with increased abdominal fat in turn have an increased risk of developing diabetes melitus and atherosclerosis. [3]

Basically, abdominal fat that you can feel by "reaching in" should be removed. The belly fat you can see anyway.

It is unclear whether obesity can be clearly attributed to too little sleep. However, it can be stated that too little sleep generally lowers general well-being and therefore improving your own sleeping habits should be at the top of the list if you want to improve your health.

It is believed that a lack of sleep can lead to a reduced sensitivity of the body to insulin. The result of some studies was that patients who reported getting little sleep at night were more likely to develop diabetes than those who reported sleeping seven or more hours at night, but also those who reported getting more than eight hours of sleep at night. It can therefore be stated that both too little sleep and too little sleep can lead to an increased risk. [4]

Fatty liver is an accumulation of fat in the liver, a classic consequence of excessive alcohol consumption. Studies have now shown that the risk of developing fatty liver disease is linked to abnormalities in sleep with low alcohol consumption or abstinence. Similar to the decreasing insulin sensitivity of the body described in the paragraph above, this problem affects both patients who reported getting too little sleep and those who got more than eight hours of sleep per night. [5]

It should be noted that some of these conditions are certainly not solely due to lack of sleep. But too little sleep is always a stress factor for the body and can help - as you have read in this article - to reduce the risk of some serious illnesses.

Sources:

[1] Rihm, J., Menz, M., Schultz, H. et.al. (2019). Sleep Depreivation Selectively Upregulates an Amygdala-Hypothalamic Circuit Involved in Food Reward. In The Journal of Neuroscience. (S. 888 - 899)
[2] NN (1997): Body fat and leptin concentration: In overweight people. In: DAZ 1997, No. 28, 06.07.1997
[3] Doris Gabel (2011): Lack of sleep makes you fat? ifb-adipositas.de
[4] Lack of sleep influences HbA1c and OGTT diabetes-news.com
[5] Slim in your sleep - How your sleep affects your figure bodymed.com