14 DAY TRIAL // People who don't get enough sleep sooner or later start craving junk food, and eventually pile up a considerable number of unwanted pounds, UC Berkeley scientists argue in a new paper published in the journal Nature Communications on August 6.
The researchers reached the conclusion that lack of sleep alters an individual's feeding behavior after closely monitoring the brain activity of 23 volunteers.
These volunteers were all healthy, young adults. The scientists studied their brains after both a normal night's sleep and a sleepless night.
It was thus discovered that, following the sleepless night, the volunteers' frontal lobes and their deeper brain centers were not working quite as they should.
Long story short, the frontal lobes, which happen to be in charge of complex decision-making, were slightly impaired.
On the other hand, the deeper brain centers, which respond to rewards, had experienced an increase in their activity levels.
To sum up, parts of the volunteers' brains were desperate to look for and be stimulated by rewards, while the mechanisms in charge of controlling these cravings were nearly sound asleep.
Commenting on the findings of this investigation, specialist Matthew Walker, argues as follows:
“What we have discovered is that high-level brain regions required for complex judgments and decisions become blunted by a lack of sleep, while more primal brain structures that control motivation and desire are amplified.”
Matthew Walker and his fellow researchers suspect that these changes in brain activity need to be held accountable for the fact that people who do not get enough sleep are more likely to become obese.
“These results shed light on how the brain becomes impaired by sleep deprivation, leading to the selection of more unhealthy foods and, ultimately, higher rates of obesity,” doctoral student Stephanie Greer explains.
The good news is that, as this study suggests, getting a good night's rest might be more than enough to foster a healthier lifestyle and weight loss.
As Matthew Walker puts it, “Getting enough sleep is one factor that can help promote weight control by priming the brain mechanisms governing appropriate food choices.”