You certainly don’t need me to tell you that lack of sleep is bad for you, you already know that. What I am going to tell you in this post is why lack of sleep will increase your chances to gain weight.

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I am not going to go full hardcore biology here but you should know that the cells of your body communicate with one another by secreting small molecules called hormones. These molecules can have very powerful effects and are able to change how you perceive the world around you and overall change your behavior. In other words it’s the way your body has to tell you what to do and when to do it..for example when the levels of glucose in your bloodstream decrease you start feeling hungry, of after an intense day your brain needs to rewire the synaptic connections between your neurons and induce a feeling of tiredness and make you want to sleep. However, this works also in another way, it changes also how much pleasure you get from doing certain actions like for example eat. A recent study published in the journal “sleep” claims that people that are sleep deprived are at greater risk of gaining weight. In this study they monitored the habits of sleep deprived people and found out that they consumed in snacks on average double the amount of calories compared to when they had a full night of sleep. A closer look revealed that sleep deprivation activated their endocannabinoid system, which is involved in reward-driven or pleasurable eating. To be clear, this is the same mechanism that is triggered in people that smoke marijuana and it’s thought to be the source of the so called, munchies. It’s true that usually being awake for longer implies also that you consume more energy, but the study found that in general the increase in food intake caused by lack of sleep exceeds the energy expenditure. So when you sleep less you tend to eat more and eating gives you more pleasure, making it harder to say no to a ice-cream or a snack. However, sleep deprivation causes other types of issues too that we may explore in further details in future posts, but here I will give you a quick list:

• an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes
• weakened immunity and increased tendency to get sick
• weakened cognitive function including memory, alertness and decision-making
• increased impulsiveness, risk-taking and addictive behaviour
• eating more and eating more unhealthy foods

I hope after reading this you will try to sleep longer.