16 November 2010

Sufficient Sleep is Part of Lifestyle Change

Yes, I am back to encourage you to get more sleep. This time, I am concerned for several reasons. Another study now tells us that lack of sleep makes it more difficult to successfully lose weight. The message is now “eight hours plus of sleep, exercise, and nutrition”.

People that can regularly get 8.5 hours of restful sleep burn more fat than people getting 5.5 hours of sleep. They have concluded that sleep loss while dieting increases the ghrelin (a hormone that stimulates appetite) associated changes in hunger, glucose and fat utilization, and energy metabolism which slows or halts weight loss.

The researchers reported that sleep-deprived participants reported feeling hungrier during the study. They agreed that sleep may be an important factor in successful weight loss and that adequate sleep may be a significant part of the lifestyle change that has normally concentrated on diet and exercise.

The message to physicians is that they need to explain to overweight patients with diabetes that people who slept 8.5 hours reduced their weight than those who slept for less time. Doctors also should remind patients that the lack of sleep causes more hunger and they expend less energy to compensate for the reduction in sleep.

So if you have been losing weight, but now or have hit a weight loss plateau, you may want to add sleep to the other remedies to break through the plateau and get on with losing weight. This is just another part of the lifestyle change so important for people of diabetes. Good luck!

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