
On one occasion, the subjects came into the lab and got a normal night of rest – roughly eight hours – before Men and women and assigned them to two different regimes, each separated by about a week. Walker and his colleagues recruited 23 healthy In the new study, which was published in the journal Nature Communications, Dr. People become less sensitive to insulin, raising their risk of Type 2 diabetes.īut until now, few if any studies have looked at precisely what goes on in the brain when people are starved of sleep and then faced with food decisions. Hormones that stimulate appetite increase, while hormones that blunt it drop. The stress hormone cortisol climbsĪnd markers of inflammation rise. Other studies have found that the underlying effects of sleep deprivation on the body can in many ways be pronounced. One pivotal study at the University of Colorado in March showed that losing just a few hours of sleep a few nights in a row caused people to pack on an average of about two pounds. In smaller, controlled studies, scientists find that when peopleĪre allowed to sleep eight hours one night and then half that amount on another, they end up eating more on the days when they’ve had less sleep. Large population studies show that bothĪdults and children are more likely to be overweight and obese the less they sleep at night. The relationship between sleep loss and weight gain is a strong one, borne out in a variety of studies over the years. Seeing are caused by sleep deprivation itself, rather than simply being perhaps more metabolically impaired when you’re sleep deprived.” “That’s important because it suggests that the changes we’re


“Their hunger was no different when they were sleep deprived and when they had a normal night of sleep,” Dr. Were evident even when the subjects were fed extra food and not experiencing any increased sensations in hunger. But the new study showed that the changes in brain activity Some experts have theorized that in a sleep-deprived state, people eat more food simply to make up for all the calories they expend as they burn the midnight oil. A sleepy brain appears to not only respond more strongly to junk food, but also has less ability to rein Walker, anĪuthor of the study and a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley. The findings suggested that one unfortunate result of sleep loss is this “double hit” in brain activity, said Matthew P.

But at the same time, the subjects experienced a sharp reduction in activity in theįrontal cortex, a higher-level part of the brain where consequences are weighed and rational decisions are made. On days when the subjects had not had proper sleep, fatteningįoods like potato chips and sweets stimulated stronger responses in a part of the brain that helps govern the motivation to eat. The research showed that depriving people of sleep for one night created pronounced changes in the way their brains responded to high-calorie junk foods. Losing sleep tends to make people eat more and gain weight, and now a new study suggests that one reason may be the impact that sleep deprivation has on the brain.
