Sleep problems and metabolic diseases

After we explained to you in the last article how lack of sleep and the occurrence of mental disorders can be connected, now follows an article on how sleep problems can be connected with metabolic disorders. This connection also makes sense, because the body has the necessary rest during sleep for digestive processes and the stabilization of the fat balance. These tasks are inadequately accomplished when the resting phase of the body is disturbed. In this article we will explain to you why sleep problems are related to food cravings, diabetes or the occurrence of 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: 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 fat cells of the body and informs the brain that there are enough energy reserves. Leptin decreases with weight loss and light fasting. The role of leptin is to signal a threat to the body and therefore can arouse a feeling of hunger. It is believed that a lack of sleep has similar consequences. So, it can be assumed that sleeping well and adequate sleep are related, but what this hormone and human sleep is about in detail is less clear.

In experiments with animals and humans, it has been found that sleep deprivation resulted in decreased leptin levels and increased ghrelin levels, which as a consequence led to increased appetite. In sleep-deprived young men, an 18% decrease in leptin level and a ghrelin level were found to result in a 23% increase in appetite, compared to the hormone levels found with healthy sleep.

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

Sleep deprivation and obesity

However, there are also correlations between the concentration of leptin 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 indicated that reduced leptin levels could also result in secondary diseases such as obesity and type II diabetes melitus in the long run. Further research is certainly needed in this area, but it can be stated that enough sleep, which is restorative, also stands for healthy appetite regulation.

So what about obesity and eating disorders with lack of sleep? Those 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 in a night. What is the reason for this?

The connection is that lack of sleep leads to fatigue and sluggishness and thus to less physical activity during the day. On the one hand, physical activity helps people to find peace and quiet in the evening and sleep better, so a vicious circle develops. 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 disadvantageous because it is in turn a burden on the metabolism. Patients with increased abdominal fat, in turn, have an increased risk of developing diabetes melitus and atherosclerosis. [3]

Basically, the belly fat that you feel by "reaching in" should be trained off. The belly fat that you can see anyway.

It is unclear whether obesity is clearly attributable to too little sleep. However, it can be stated that too little sleep generally lowers general well-being and thus improving one's own sleep habits should also be at the top of the list if one wants to improve one's health.

It is believed that lack of sleep can lead to 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. Thus, it can be stated that both too little sleep and too little sleep can lead to 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 is related to abnormalities in sleep when alcohol consumption is low or abstinent. Similar to the body's waning insulin sensitivity 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 remains to be said that some of these diseases are certainly not solely due to a 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 diseases.

Sources:

[1] Rihm, J., Menz, M., Schultz, H. et.al. (2019). Sleep Deprivation 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 persons. In: DAZ 1997, No. 28, 06.07.1997
[3] Doris Gabel (2011): Sleep deprivation makes you fat? ifb-adipositas.de
[4] Sleep deprivation affects HbA1c and OGTT diabetes-news.de
[5] Slim in sleep - How your sleep affects your figure bodymed.com