The Link Between Obesity, Disease and Sleep

There has been quite a bit of press lately about how sleep, the amount of it and the quality that you get on a regular basis, can affect more than just our moods and our alertness. Now there is gathering evidence that sleep may have a great impact on how much you weigh for a number of reasons.

So, if you think that getting your Z's wasn't affecting your health, then you definitely want to read on, because it could be affecting not only your weight, but also may have a serious impact on your longevity, and your predisposition toward everything from cancer to diabetes.

You may think that this supposition goes only one way. That is, that it's only the lack of sleep that increases your health problems and also may impact overall longevity. However, it also appears to go the opposite way as well, since people who get too much sleep, which is nine hours or more, also experiencing higher rates of health issues, as well as a higher incidence of obesity.

So, what is described as being too little sleep, exactly? Well anything that falls under the absolute minimum of six hours of sleep per night qualifies as very little sleep, but that can vary per study. Some studies claim that the only acceptable range of sleep is about seven to eight hours of solid rest per night.

The consensus does seem to be, however, that anything under six hours per night could be seriously detrimental to your health and that by getting this small amount of sleep on a regular basis may increase your odds of becoming overweight or obese. The thought process behind sleep's relationship to obesity and excess weight goes two fold.

Some researchers believe that those that get little sleep are already predisposed, perhaps genetically or personality-wise, to not get enough sleep by traits such as anxious personalities, depressive disorders, and even people who smoke or drink too much caffeine.

The end result, however, is the same, and that is that there is definitely a correlation between those that get too much or too little sleep and obesity, so it could be assumed that either one causes the other, or vice versa.

Another thought is that lack of sleep, or too much sleep, can trigger certain hormones and chemicals in the brain that make people more hungry and also induce a more insatiable appetite that contains more cravings for foods such as carbohydrates and sweets, to make up for the hormonal imbalance that is caused when someone is getting improper amounts of sleep, whether it be too much or not enough.

I know that I've seen this theory at work in my own life when I've had too much sleep, which for me is nine hours or more, although I can rarely sleep longer than that, or when I've had five or less hours of sleep.

On these mornings and the ensuing day after a bad night's sleep, I almost always find that I have a huge appetite, and that all I want to eat seems to be those "comfort foods" that are always the biggest diet no-no's, like sugary sweet and fatty fried foods. For me, my body has proven to me time and time again that adequate and correct amounts of sleep directly affect my appetite and the types of foods that I crave.

Getting the correct amount of rest, as well as the quality of that rest, every night on a consistent basis has also been studied as a possible cause or at least partial cause of some disease. Take for example a recent study that showed that men who worked the graveyard shift and also women who worked this shift were more prone to getting hormonally based cancers, for men that cancer being in the prostate, and for women the correlation was for breast cancer.

It makes sense that the lack of solid sleep and the kind of rest that coincides with something called the circadian rhythm, which is sleep that is had between certain times which is said to be more effective than sleeping during the day, causes people to be more prone to certain types of cancers as well. This would partially explain the obesity factor as well, since hormones are a delicately balanced presence in our body which greatly dictate our base weight.

They also run almost everything in our lives, from our moods, to our appetites, to the healthy growth, division, and reproduction of cells, so it makes sense that when our sleep is out of wack, it causes great harm to our bodies.

The lesson here? Well, it's that sleep is a lot more important than many of us think. It used to be something of a luxury to get the right amount of it, however, research is pointing to the fact that we have to make it as much of a priority to get the right amount if we want to live longer, disease free, and happier lives.