14 DAY TRIAL // According to a research whose findings were made available to the general public this past Monday, those who fail to get enough sleep are bound to experience an increase in their body weight.
Furthermore, it appears that just one week of sleep deprivation is more than enough to cause people to gain some unpleasant inches around their waistline.
Ironically enough, this weight gain occurs regardless of the fact that sleep deprived people tend to burn a tad more calories than those who take the time to rest.
The researchers who took the time to study this phenomenon explain it as follows: whenever an individual does not get as much sleep as they should, their body starts to demand a higher intake of fats and carbohydrates.
This is because staying awake under such circumstances puts increased pressure on the organism, causing it to require a higher caloric input. US News quotes Kenneth Wright, the lead author of this study, who made a case of how, “Sleep loss itself leads people to expend more energy because the body needs more to keep it awake.”
“People eat more in response to these needs, but they eat more than they really need to, which leads to weight gain,” this specialist went on to argue.
As well as this, Kenneth Wright and his fellow researchers maintain that people who for one reason or another go to bed long after sunset are likely to eat at significantly later hours, this being a habit that also contributes to their gaining weight.
“It changed the timing of their circadian rhythm—it was pushed to a later time, so people were eating more at night. On top of that, when people weren't obtaining enough sleep they ate smaller breakfasts because their bodies thought they were still supposed to be sleeping,” Kenneth Wright explains.
These conclusions concerning the link between sleep deprivation and weight gain were reached after studying the sleeping and eating patterns of a total of 16 volunteers over the course of two weeks.
During the first week, the volunteers were asked to only sleep about five hours per night, while during the second week they were allowed to rest for a total of nine hours.