{"id":10690,"date":"2020-07-17T19:51:00","date_gmt":"2020-07-17T23:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=10690"},"modified":"2020-07-17T14:57:43","modified_gmt":"2020-07-17T18:57:43","slug":"lack-of-sleep-and-weight-gain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/lack-of-sleep-and-weight-gain\/","title":{"rendered":"Lack of Sleep and Weight Gain: The Shocking Truth"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What is the correlation between lack of sleep and weight gain? Does lack of sleep really cause weight gain, or even obesity? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Researchers know that sleep deprivation can cause many health risks. One of these is weight gain. While the exact reason lack of sleep and weight gain are linked is up for debate, the two are definitely linked. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

How Lack of Sleep and Weight Gain Are Linked<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the damage it causes to the brain, sleep deprivation disrupts the normal function of many physiological processes, likely contributing to chronic diseases<\/strong>. In this chapter we\u2019ll cover a bevy of health issues associated with sleep deprivation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At a high level, sleep deprivation of even just 1-2 hours triggers the sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight response<\/strong>) and disrupts hormonal balances. This also implies that sleep is necessary for the normal maintenance of physiology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shortform Caveat<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Many of the population studies cited in Why We Sleep are correlational – e.g. people who sleep less are more likely to have heart disease, after controlling for many other factors. But the causation is unclear – some other factors that predispose people to get heart disease (like a high baseline level of stress) could also reduce sleep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To address this, the experimental <\/em>studies cited attempt to link lack of sleep to a middle physiological state, which itself is causative for the disease. For instance, lack of sleep increases blood pressure, which the medical consensus believes is causative for heart disease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ideally, the \u201csmoking gun\u201d experiment would be to randomize people into normal-sleep and low-sleep groups for years, then observe the rate of disease. However, this is impractical (it\u2019s hard to run very long studies like this and impossible to double-blind) and likely unethical (if low sleep is already believed to cause severe disease).
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Obesity, Weight Gain<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As it relates to weight, sleep deprivation:<\/p>\n\n\n\n