Sleep deprivation and poor sleep habits can disrupt this careful balance, greatly increasing your chance of gaining weight; it can even put you at risk for obesity.

The linking factor

The University of Warwick Medical School found a correlation between short sleep, a higher body-mass index [BMI] and a larger waist circumference.

Furthermore, researchers at Columbia and the University of Chicago found that people who sleep five hours per night have a 50 per cent higher chance of being obese, while those who sleep six hours have a 23 per cent greater risk of obesity than their well-rested counterparts.

The correlation goes both ways—those who are obese often have difficulty sleeping due to the discomfort. They also have medical problems such as sleep apnoea.

The excess weight around the neck complicates respiratory functioning, causing heavy snoring, repetitive pauses in breathing, a high risk for hypertension and excessive day-time sleepiness.

We know that sleep and food are both related to our feeling energetic, but why this strong connection between amount of sleep at night and body weight?

The role of hormones

Many scientists have looked at hormones to get to the bottom of this relationship. How much we eat for energy is largely dictated by the interplay between two hormones: ghrelin and leptin.

In humans, ghrelin concentrations are negatively correlated with body mass index [BMI]; the higher the BMI, the lesser ghrelin circulating in the blood. This makes sense: the more energy you already have stored, the less your body needs you to eat.

Therefore, as Troels Hansen of Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark and his colleagues have discovered, obese patients [typically characterised by lower than average levels of ghrelin] saw an increase in ghrelin levels by 12 per cent following weight loss interventions.

Leptin, on the other hand, inhibits food intake. It is produced mostly in adipose tissue [another name for body fat], where it is released into the bloodstream and heads to the brain to report on how much energy the body is storing.

While ghrelin makes you hungry, leptin helps with weight loss in the long term, making you less hungry. Leptin levels are higher among those with a higher BMI and among those with a higher percentage of total body fat.

Sleeping benefits

Researchers Shahrad Taheri and Ling Lin from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Stanford University, USA, and their colleagues found that shorter sleep is associated with elevated ghrelin and reduced leptin and, of course, higher BMI.

This imbalance increases appetite and slows metabolism. A study by researchers at Stanford and the University of Wisconsin monitored the sleep duration, weight, body fat, and leptin and ghrelin levels of 1,000 volunteers. They found that those who slept less than eight hours at night had elevated ghrelin and lowered leptin molecules and, alarmingly, higher body fat.

Still not convinced? Consider this: Researchers at the University of Chicago determined that even among healthy men and women with average BMIs, those who slept less than six hours per night experienced hormonal changes that could affect their future body weight and overall health.

This is because short-sleepers produce 30 per cent more insulin than normal sleepers in order to maintain regular blood-sugar levels, predisposing them to weight gain.

Another important factor to consider is sleep and cortisol levels, also known as stress hormones: Insufficient sleep triggers the release of additional cortisol, which also stimulates hunger.

When sleep deprived, we crave sugary and high-calorie foods. In one study of 12 healthy males, researchers at the University of Chicago found that when people were subjected to sleep deprivation, not only did their leptin levels go down and ghrelin levels sky-rocket, but their cravings for high carbohydrate, calorie-dense foods also increased by 45 per cent.

There are, of course, various factors [stress, diet, exercise, and genetics]—all out of our control—that contribute to our body shapes and sizes and our appetites. However, for many of us, instead of a snack, we may actually need some shuteye.

Once you understand this, you can begin to use sleep to control and even lose weight. Overall, it’s clear: sleep is crucial to regulating your appetite and metabolism and plays a key role in any healthy weight management programme.

In addition to practicing good sleep habits [such as meeting your nightly requirement of 7.5 – 8.5 hours of sleep and maintaining a regular sleep/wake schedule]; following a well-balanced diet will significantly improve your sleep. In doing so, you’ll improve your ability to maintain your weight and also live a healthy lifestyle!

Tips for sleep and weight management

• Eat most of your calories during the morning and early afternoon and majority of your calories, particularly proteins, before the evening. Have a light meal at dinner and save room for a light, pre-bed snack.
• Eat a dinner of grains and vegetables. Choose a light, satisfying meal of hearty leafy green vegetables such as spinach or fenugreek and rice or easy-to-digest vegetables.
• Avoid all caffeine after 2pm.
• Enjoy a light snack 45 minutes before bed. Choose foods containing L-tryptophan as they are useful for promoting sleep due to their serotonin-inducing properties [serotonin is the neurotransmitter involved in initiating sleep]. Simple, easy-to-digest carbohydrates such as crackers, half a banana, or a handful of non-sugary cereal are best.
• Avoid large meals and spicy foods before bedtime. These will increase gastrointestinal activity and disrupt sleep.

With inputs from Rebecca G Fortgang and Sharon R Driscoll. Rebecca G. Fortgang is a BA with honors in linguistics and cognitive science from Cornell University. Sharon R Driscoll is a pre-medical student at Cornell University and a member of the Sleep for Success consulting firm.

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“I get hungry right before bed and end up eating a big meal.” “My bedroom is hot and stuffy, my mattress sags, and the neighbours are noisy.”

“I’m so frustrated when I wake up at night that I start worrying how I’m going to make it through the next day, and then I can’t fall back to sleep.”

Do any of these predicaments sound familiar? There are many factors that seriously affect the quantity and quality of our sleep. Fortunately, there are proven strategies that will enable you to overcome common sleep obstacles. Here, we list a some of them.

Avoid caffeine after 2pm

Caffeine stimulates your metabolism, which keeps you awake and alert. It’s the magic bullet that allows you and millions of other people to make it through the day, and is the most widely used drug in the world. Yep, it’s a drug [albeit legal], consumed by 85 per cent of the population.

Caffeine is a major cause of insomnia, more so than any other food or beverage. Having coffee [or caffeinated tea, soda, energy drink, or chocolate bar] after 2 pm will disrupt your sleep. Caffeine has a half-life of six hours, which means that six hours after your last sip, half the caffeine is still in your body.

If you’ve had several cups during the day, the effect is cumulative. Consuming more than 300mg [three cups of coffee, soda or energy drink] will definitely affect your sleep. However, it can take much less for some individuals; just one cup of coffee in the morning or a cola at lunch can be disruptive.

Everyone’s sensitivity to caffeine is different, but it generally increases with age. Caffeine not only makes it more difficult to fall asleep, but also increases the frequency and duration of night time awakenings.

After a poor night’s sleep, you have no choice but to rely on more caffeine to get you through the next day. Then, when it’s time to go to bed, your heart is racing, you can’t sleep, you wake up exhausted in the morning and you reach for more caffeine. Sound like a familiar cycle? Let’s break it.

To gauge the effect caffeine has on your sleep; eliminate all caffeine from your diet for one week. Although it’ll be hard at first, you’ll gradually find that this change allows you to sleep soundly at night and be more productive during the day.

If you drink five or more cups daily, you have a dependency problem and will probable find it difficult to go ‘cold turkey’, so gradually taper your caffeine consumption. Cut it in half each successive day and substitute a glass of unsweetened fruit juice or water.

Women should note that a high intake of caffeine makes it more difficult for them to become pregnant and can also affect the health of the foetus. And if you have any type of heart irregularity you certainly should be avoiding caffeine, which raises your blood pressure and can induce cardiac arrhythmias [abnormal heart beat].

If you miss caffeine, it’s okay to gradually add a small portion of mild or decaf coffee back into your diet. But if you’re sleeping well, you’ll not need any caffeine to make it through the day.

Avoid alcohol three hours before bed

Many people believe that a nightcap facilitates sleep, but alcohol is not a sedative. It’s a central nervous system suppressant and in large quantities becomes a stimulant.

A drink after work or early dinner is fine because your body will have plenty of time to absorb the alcohol. But if you drink within three hours of bedtime, it will destroy the quality of your rest. Alcohol causes you to wake up in REM [Rapid Eye Movement] sleep every 90 minutes, so throughout the night you’ll be continually shaken and stirred. And be warned that mixing alcohol with sleeping pills or tranquilisers can be lethal.

Quit smoking for instant rest

Nicotine is an even stronger stimulant than caffeine. It makes it hard to fall asleep and maintain sleep. The reason nicotine causes you to lie awake at night is because your body is actually experiencing withdrawal symptoms, craving another hit. Smoking also worsens snoring and may cause life-threatening sleep apnoea.

Apart from being carcinogenic, nicotine increases blood pressure, heart rate and stimulates brain activity. Studies clearly demonstrate that sleep improves immediately when subjects stop smoking; two-pack-a-day smokers who quit, cut the time they lie awake at night in half.

Exercise between 5pm and 7pm

Ask busy executives to recommend the best time to exercise, and they’ll typically respond ‘early morning’. Wrong answer! An extra hour of sleep does more for your health than running around in a half-awake state. Your body temperature is also relatively low in the mornings, making it more likely that you’ll trip or strain a muscle because you’re not fully alert or warmed up.

The best time to work out is between 5 and 7 in the evening. Exercising at this time is more likely to enhance the depth of your sleep. But avoid strenuous exercise [except pleasurable sex!] within three hours of bedtime, because exercise elevates core body temperature for 5 – 6 hours. In order to feel drowsy and stimulate the release of melatonin, body temperature needs to drop.

It’s not surprising then that athletes experience more delta-wave [deep], restorative sleep than non-athletes. To approximate that kind of rest, exercise moderately at least five days a week for 20 minutes or more. Any aerobic activity, even fast walking, will not only improve your overall health, but will also improve the quality and quantity of your sleep.

Don’t nap unless you must

Once you’ve established good nocturnal habits and you’re sleeping long and well, you should stop feeling tired in the afternoon. If you still occasionally do, it’s better to resist the urge to nap rather than risk upsetting your new, effective sleep cycle.

Likewise, if you’re a senior citizen, suffering from insomnia, and/or are struggling to get into a consistent sleep pattern, we recommend pushing through the day without a nap.

However, if you’re burning the candle at both ends, there’s a strong flame of evidence that a 20-minute afternoon power nap will make you more alert and productive and less anxious about getting to sleep later.

Be as active as possible

Although it sounds contradictory, boredom can actually cause sleep loss. We see this frequently among elderly. Poor sleepers tend to spend more time sitting around and watching TV. Good sleepers spend more time working, socialising and pursuing hobbies.

They are motivated and excited by life’s opportunities. So stay mentally active by getting involved in things that interest you and make you think. Do crossword puzzles or Sudoku; take an online course, join clubs, volunteer at a hospital, school, or social activity.

Eat well

There’s a significant link between sleep deprivation and obesity. People sleeping for less than four hours per night are 73 per cent more likely to be obese than those sleeping for 7 – 9 hours. The correlation goes both ways.

Staying in bed longer can actually keep you from gaining weight. The less sleep you’re getting, the less efficiently the appetite-regulation system works. People falsely think they’re hungry when they’re actually sleepy.

Instead of a snack, they need some shuteye. Once you understand this, you can begin to use sleep to control and even lose weight. The best solution may be getting one additional hour of sleep every night. If you do that and you’re currently overweight, expect to lose an average of one pound per week, all else being constant.

As per a University of Chicago study even healthy individuals with an average body mass index [BMI] who slept less than six hours per night experienced hormonal changes that affect their future body weight and overall health. They had to produce 30 per cent more insulin than normal sleepers just to maintain regular blood sugar levels.

That alone predisposed them to gaining weight. Aside from the chemical changes that occur when you’re sleeping less, many emotional and behavioural shifts too happen, including an erosion of motivation and coordination that, in turn, make exercise unappealing.

Live a varied life. This will help you feel good about yourself and make it easier to sleep at night.

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Do you know what it feels like to sleep well at night and be wide awake, creative and dynamic all day long? If you’re like most people, you probably don’t. Try these simple steps to improve your quality of sleep.

Determine your Personal Sleep Quotient [PSQ]

The the optimum amount of sleep your body needs to function at its best. Failing to reach your personal sleep requirement diminishes concentration, productivity and work quality. If we operated machinery the way we’re driving our bodies, we’d be guilty of reckless endangerment. After 17 – 19 hours without sleep, your brain activity is similar to someone with a blood alcohol content [BAC] of 0.05 [0.08 being the legal limit for intoxication in most countries].

Here’s how to determine your PSQ:

• Pick a bedtime when you’re likely to fall asleep quickly— that’s at least eight hours before you need to get up. Keep to this bedtime for the next week and note when you wake up each morning. You might rise early for a few days if you’re used to sleeping less, that habit will soon give way to longer rest.
• If you need an alarm to wake up, if it’s difficult to get out of bed, or if you’re tired during the day, eight hours isn’t enough for you. Move your bedtime up by 15 – 30 minutes the next week. Continue doing this each week until you awaken without an alarm and feel alert all day.
• When you determine what you think is your ideal bedtime, cut 15 minutes off it to see if you’re sleepy the next day. If so, then you’ve nailed your PSQ. Add those 15 minutes back, and you’re set. Most adults require 7.5 – 9 hours of sleep to be fully awake and energised all-day long. As a rule of thumb, you’ll probably have to add one more hour to your current sleep schedule.

Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day

Every day means seven days a week, 365 days a year—regularity is vital for setting and stabilising your body’s biological clock. It only takes a few weeks to fully sync the hours you spend in bed with the sleepy phase of your clock. When this happens, you won’t need an alarm clock to wake you up and the hours you spend awake will correspond to when you feel most alert and refreshed.

By sticking to a schedule, you’ll be significantly more alert than if you slept for the same total amount of time at varying hours during the week. And eventually, such regularity will reduce the total sleep time required for maximum daytime alertness. Yes, a regular sleep routine will enable you to do just as well on a little less sleep.

British sleep researchers and scientists at the Harvard Medical School found that by altering your sleep schedule by even a few hours, mood deteriorates. Shift-workers in particular experience more anxiety and depression partly because they’re out of sync with their biological clocks.

Sleep in one continuous block

Sometimes it’s impossible; any new parent or an older guy with prostate woes will tell you so. But so-called ‘fragmented sleep’—even for hours—is not physically or mentally restorative and causes daytime drowsiness. It also dramatically compromises learning, memory, productivity and creativity. In fact, six hours of continuous sleep is more restorative than eight hours of fragmented sleep.

Senior citizens anticipating a night of fragmented sleep often go to bed early hoping to manage eight hours of total sleep within a 10-hour period. But as we’ve seen, that’s a waste of time. So, don’t let yourself doze on and off for hours. Limiting your time in bed to your PSQ, and not a minute [or 20] more, will eventually bring greater benefits.

Many people use snooze bars thinking that they’ll get an extra hour of sleep after the first alarm goes off. Wrong! If you set the alarm to ring every 15 minutes for an hour, at best, you might get 18 – 20 minutes worth of fragmented sleep. It’s much better to go to bed one hour earlier and wake up naturally.

Make up for your lost sleep as soon as possible

Every hour that you’re awake you’re building sleep debt. Every two hours of wakefulness requires a repayment of one hour of sleep. It’s a 2:1 ratio. That’s why the general rule is that after 16 hours of being awake, you’ll need 8 hours of sleep. When you violate this rule, sleep debt accumulates quickly. Before long, you’ll crash [hopefully not on the road], get sick or perform poorly.

Here’s how to make up for lost sleep:

• Don’t try to replace it all at once. If you skipped a night, don’t try to sleep for 14 – 16 hours the next night. That’s just about impossible because your long-established biological clock is pre-programmed to put you to sleep and wake you up at a set time every day. Instead, apportion your sleep debt out over the next few days until you feel better.
• Catch up on lost sleep by going to bed earlier than usual, not by sleeping late. If you sleep late, you’ll find it harder call asleep the following night at the usual hour.
• Don’t try to make up for large sleep losses during the week by sleeping in on the weekend. This is like trying to get fit or lose weight by doing all your exercising or dieting on Saturdays and Sundays. Your brain doesn’t have a separate biological clock for weekends. Changing your sleep/wake times disturbs your body’s natural rhythm. If you sleep till noon on Sunday, for instance, you won’t be very tired, come your regular bedtime. Maybe you’ll doze off sometime after midnight, but just a few short hours later, your alarm will jerk you back to consciousness and you’ll have to crawl to work with the Monday morning blahs. You’ll have induced jet lag without leaving your zip code.
• Try napping to pay back your sleep debt. However, be careful not to nap too long or too late in the day, or you’ll further disturb your sleep cycle. Whenever your sleep is significantly disturbed, return to your regular schedule as soon as possible. For years of accumulated sleep debt, it may take as long as 4 – 6 weeks until you discipline your sleep. But the resulting alertness, mental and physical performance, and enjoyment of life will be more than worth the discipline it took to get there.

In sum, determine and meet your PSQ, establish a regular bedtime schedule, get one long block of continuous sleep, and be sure to make up for lost sleep. As you can see, the cure for sleep loss is painless and pleasurable. All it takes is just a little discipline.

Copyright C 2010, Dr James B Maas and Rebecca Robbins excerpted from the forthcoming book, “Sleep for Success“.

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Signs of danger

The most common symptom of sleep deprivation is fatigue. But as obvious as it seems, many people become so accustomed to feeling chronically tired that they accept it as normal. This attitude is also often applied to other symptoms such as mood swings, irritability, anxiety, and difficulty concentrating, remembering, learning and interacting socially.

Many people just write off these signs to their personality traits of being a loner, a slow-learner, or just not a vibrant person. They’d be surprised to know that their fatigue has created this shell around their true personality and abilities.

Signs of chronic sleep deprivation can also include frequent infections/illnesses, blurred vision, changes in appetite, and depression. While these symptoms may be relatively minor and seem unrelated at first, they can be the precursors of life-shortening afflictions. Without proper treatment, they can negatively impact your health and quality of life.

The first cut

When it seems there aren’t enough hours in the day, sleep is the first thing we cut—though ironically if we slept more, we’d be more efficient and productive. The advent of the Internet, buzzing PDAs and 24/7 entertainment has compounded matters. Abusing sleep with blissful machismo is now deeply engrained in our global society.

Many specific factors contribute to sleep deprivation. Temporary sleep loss, for instance, is often triggered by passing stressors, such as a headache, toothache, indigestion, back problems, cold, flu or jetlag. While these causes are frustrating, they’re relatively easy to treat.

Anxiety is the most common cause of short-term sleep loss, and it can last for weeks. Nervousness about money, marriage or relationships, losing or finding a job, your weight or other health concerns and even boredom, can make you toss and turn in bed.

Long-term sleep loss is occasionally caused by environmental factors—your job [if you’re a night-shift worker], where you live [if it’s in a noisy area]—but more so, it stems from medical conditions such as arthritis, diabetes, epilepsy, ulcers and heart disease. It could also result from consistent intake of drugs, caffeine or alcohol. Sleep-specific medical conditions like sleep apnoea, narcolepsy, and restless leg syndrome can disrupt rest as well.

The adverse effects

Sleep deprivation affects you in many ways. Here are some of them:

• Daytime drowsiness deteriorates. Performance plummets and cognition wanes when you are deprived of sleep.
• You become susceptible to micro sleeps—brief episodes of sleep that you’re unaware of and that occur during waking hours. Lasting only a few seconds, micro sleeps can produce inattention, resulting in accidents and injury.
• Your frequency of getting colds and flu increases. Dr Jan Born at the University of Luebeck in Germany found that people who sleep less than six hours per night have 50 per cent less resistance to viral infection than those getting eight hours of sleep. In addition, Dr Sheldon Cohen of Carnegie Mellon University found that those sleeping less than seven hours per night are three times more likely to catch a cold than longer-sleepers.
• Weight gain. You might think that spending more time in bed makes you lazy, but did you know that not spending enough time in bed can make you fat? Lack of sleep lowers leptin levels in the brain and raises ghrelin levels in the stomach. These hormones are responsible for appetite regulation. So when you’re sleep deprived, you’re more likely to overeat.
• Diabetes. A study at the University of Chicago involving healthy young men with no risk factor for diabetes found that after just one week of inadequate sleep, they were in a pre-diabetic state. Researchers attributed the result to overactive central nervous systems [caused by not sleeping], which affected the ability of the pancreas to produce enough insulin to adequately regulate glucose levels.
• Heart disease. Lack of sleep causes the body to produce more stress hormones. Such an imbalance can lead to arteriosclerosis, which causes heart attacks and stroke in addition to hypertension, increased fat storage, and lower production of growth hormones and testosterone.
• Cancer. Researchers at Stanford University found that good sleep habits can be a valuable weapon in fighting cancers, citing melatonin [released during sleep] and cortisol production [involved in regulating immune system activity] as vital players in patient recovery.
• Behavioural changes. Lack of sleep causes mood shifts [depression and irritability], sub-par mental functioning/perception, concentration problems, difficulties in thinking logically and critically, failing to analyse and assimilate information. reduced ability to communicate, lower creativity, and impaired motor skills and coordination.

How to get over it

Learn to sleep better and sleep more. Most people need to rest just one extra hour per night to stay completely alert all day. It’ll take a few weeks to effectively change your schedule to accommodate this, but eventually you should be waking up naturally without an alarm clock. And after just a few nights of meeting your personal sleep quotient by improving your sleep strategies, you will feel a notable difference in your health.

By James B. Maas, Ph.D. and Rebecca S. Robbins, Cornell University C 2010. All rights reserved.

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