Do you really get enough Sleep?

Hey Adrenaline Junkies!

It’s been a while since my last post, Happy New Year!!

After the holiday season, and the flu being passed around I was feeling a bit sluggish. It is a busy time of the year, with many late night parties, sweets, goodies and booze. I have read a bit about sleep, cravings and weight loss/ gain. It was during the season I began to truly feel the lack of sleep and had cravings. With the less sleep I had, the less self control I felt and with all the goodies around…well… This is when I decided to do some more research about the hormones in our bodies, how sleep affects them and how this directly affects our appetites and thus weight.

The two hormones, ghrelin and leptin are hormones that directly affect our appetite and satiety factor, the clue to tell us we are satisfied and to stop eating. And further studies show that the production of these hormones may be affected by our sleep cycles.

First, cells in our stomach and pancreas produce ghrelin, this hormone signals to our brain that we are hungry. Leptin, has often been called the “obesity hormone” or the “starvation hormone”, is a protein hormone that is stored in our fat cells; leptin circulates in our bloodstream and signals our brain that we have enough fat stored in our cells for energy consumption, or we don’t and therefore tells our brain to consume food / energy. It can be helpful to understand leptin similar to a thermostat. Once our body is at equilibrium/ satisfied and we have substantial energy stored for functioning, exercise and normal metabolic processes, enough leptin is produced to suppress hunger and to tell us to consuming. There is research explaining and supporting the idea that individuals have a certain genetic makeup that determines how much leptin their body produces, therefore supporting the idea that obesity can be genetic, which leads into a whole new discussion.

Back to hormones, weight and sleep. When you do not have sufficient amount of sleep, your body will produce more leptin and reduce the production of ghrelin, which in return will increase our appetite, cravings and increase the risk of poor eating habits.
A third hormone that affects appetite when an individual does not get enough sleep is cortisol. With less sleep, there is an increase in the levels of cortisol in our blood and as a result will decrease the rate of our metabolism.

Therefore, bottom line either wanting to lose weight or maintain our weight and fitness, we need to make sure we getting enough sleep each and every night. Most research supports that 8 hours a night is sufficient to keep these hormone and therefore weight in check.

Bottom line, sleep is a crucial factor for fitness, health and well being!
Get more ZZZ’s!

Here’s a great link for more information on Sleep deprivation.