You need Good Sleep to Fight Fat if You are Dieting

A small research conducted in US states that getting too little sleep might prevent dieters from losing body fat.
The study that got issued in the Annals of Internal Medicine, adds to evidence that sleep habits play a role in weight regulation and suggest people embarking on a weight-loss plan may want to make sure they are catching enough shut-eye each night.

The research included 10 overweight men and women who lived in a sleep lab for two separate two-week periods. During both periods they followed the same calorie-restricted diet but for one period, the participants slept for 8.5 hours per night, while during the other they got 5.5 hours. Researchers from the University of Chicago found the dieters lost the same amount of weight under both conditions - just under 7 pounds, on average.
But during the sleep-restricted period, they mainly lost muscle rather than fat. When participants got 8.5 hours of sleep, more than half of their weight loss came from shedding fat. But when they got 5.5 hours of sleep, only one-quarter of their weight loss came from fat -- translating to a 55 per cent reduction in fat loss. The majority of their weight loss came from lean body tissue, which refers to muscle and any other body tissue that is not fat.
So, they lost the same amount of weight, but the composition was different. Dr. Plamen Penev, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Chicago, said that successful dieters always shed a certain amount of muscle but wanted to limit that loss in favor of shedding fat.
The study, however, has a number of limitations. Besides its small size, it also looked only at short-term weight loss. More research is needed to see how sleep duration might affect dieters' body composition over time. It was also unclear how well these findings from a tightly controlled sleep-lab setting might fit the "real world." A number of studies have found self-described "short sleepers" - typically defined as those who get less than 6 hours of sleep each night - tend to weigh more or gain more weight over time than people who get more sleep.

Lab studies have suggested sleep loss may alter people's levels of the "hunger hormones" leptin and ghrelin. Leptin is secreted by fat cells; low blood levels of the hormone promote hunger, while increases tell the brain that body is full and encourage calorie burning. Ghrelin is secreted by the stomach to boost appetite.
Penev's study  found that under sleep-restricted condition, participants reported greater hunger during the day compared with the 8-hour sleep condition even though they consumed the same number of calories during both periods. They also had higher blood levels of acylated ghrelin, one form of the appetite-boosting hormone. Penev said there wsa no one-size-fits-all prescription for sleep and more studies are needed in real-world settings.

Sleep Longer to Live Longer

Want to live to 100? Well, then get 10 hours of sleep a night, suggests a new study. Sleep is a major factor in rejuvenating the body and activating the immune system.


In the research, boffins figured out that people, who reach 100 are three times more likely to spend at least 10 hours a night in bed.
The research involved an analysis of data from a 2005 Chinese survey. The sample was constituted of 15,638 adults aged 65 and older, including 3,927, who were between the age of 90 and 99 and 2,794 who were 100 or older, reports The Daily Express.


Dr Danan Gu, of Portland State University in Oregon, said: 


“About 65 per cent of the sample overall reported that their sleep quality was good or very good, and the weighted average daily sleep time was about seven-and- a-half hours including naps. Surprisingly, the oldest adults aged 100 and above were 70 per cent more likely to report good sleep quality than younger participants aged 65 to 79. Participants who were 100 years of age and older were less likely to sleep for five or fewer hours a day but they were almost three times more likely to sleep for 10 hours or more. Men were 23 per cent more likely than women to report sleeping well.”


When humans sleep, their cells regenerate, and they also omit the toxins along with activating the immune system cells. The research has been published in the May issue of the journal Sleep.