With the hustle and bustle of moderns lives, sleep is not something that most give priority to. Sleep deprivation is associated with weight gain and metabolic issues. Science is looking at this link of this effect, trying to understand the connection between the sleep and metabolic pathways. Clinical studies are finding that little and poor quality of sleep, predicts the development of type 2 diabetes and obesity. Findings like these suggest that lack of sleep, effect issues in regulating your metabolism.
The evidence is growing, indicating that a good nights sleep is important for keeping healthy. Lack of sleep is contributing to metabolic disorders, cancers and cardiovascular diseases.
What is Metabolism?
Metabolism is a chemical reactions within the cells of you body that converts the food you eat, into energy. This energy is essential for your survival, it allows you to do everything from thinking, to growing, to healing. Here you can learn more about metabolism and foods to optimize it.
Regulating your Metabolism
Glucose and Insulin
The food you ingest travels through the digestive tract to be broken down. The process of breaking down food extracts the nutrients that your body needs to be absorbed into the blood stream.
Glucose is one of these nutrients. It is a simple sugar absorbed into the blood stream, creating a rise in blood sugar levels.
This rise in blood sugar levels, sends a signal to the pancreatic beta cells to secrete insulin. The role of insulin is to stabilize blood glucose levels. Glucose plays an especially important role in body tissues such as the liver and muscles.
Insulin resistance is the result of sleep deprivation. In this state, sugar cravings increase.
Leptin
Leptin is a hormone responsible for reducing appetite. People who have short sleep often have reduced leptin levels. This means that lower leptin levels result in more appetite. This can often cause bad nutritional choice and late night snacking.
Melatonin, Sleep and Insulin
Melatonin, is a natural hormone key role to sleep regulation and an important link between the circadian rhythm and insulin.
Exposure to light suppresses the production of melatonin, and after falling asleep, within 5 hours, melatonin peaks. This regulates the sleep-wake cycle, by reducing body temperature and making you drowsy.
Melatonin plays an important role in inhibiting insulin secretion. This study compared women with high versus low melatonin secretion. The results found that women with lower melatonin were at double the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
Conclusion
For years, the impact of sleep on weight loss has been overlooked. As a matter of fact, the focus of weight loss lay on working out and diet. Exercise and nutrition may set the stage for regulating metabolism, however many still struggle to see results. There is a natural correlation between your metabolism and circadian rhythm. Analyzing sleep must therefore be part of building the whole picture. By understanding the underlying mechanisms and hormones involved with a sleep and metabolism, novel weight-loss strategies can be established.
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