According to “Ten putative contributors to the obesity epidemic,” the factor known as “sleep debt” has not really made its case as a major obesity villain. The multiple authors say,
For all of these putative causes, we believe further research is warranted. For some such as sleep debt, research is warranted to determine whether the factor is indeed contributing to obesity levels.
For some, such as sleep debt or ambient temperature effects, studies involving manipulation of these factors in human randomized controlled trials to evaluate effects (if any) on weight seem warranted, and indeed some such studies are underway.
To put the question colloquially, is sleep debt actually “a thing”? Interesting cases to consult would be those of people who have suffered sleep deprivation as one aspect of a planned, calculated agenda of interrogation and/or punishment. But in that extreme instance, food deprivation and several other factors would have been present, so such individuals would make unhelpful experimental subjects. When undergoing sleep deprivation, they were not concurrently in a position to experience weight gain.
Still, the “Sleep Debt and Obesity” section takes up a rather large proportion of the “Ten putative contributors” paper, which includes 231 instances of the keyword itself.
Does sleep duration affect the biological mediators of energy homeostasis and appetite? Apparently, yes. Over the past five decades or so, among humans of diverse ages and nations, and among animals, the connection between decreased sleep and obesity has been increasingly noted. But there is more to it than that. Depending on other variables, sleep deprivation seems capable of causing either weight loss or weight gain.
Sleep, or a deficit of it, affects ghrelin, leptin, galanin, orexin, thyroid stimulating hormone, glucose, insulin, peptides, and no doubt other important chemicals produced by the body. Sleep debt is associated with an appetite for masses of energetic high-carbohydrate foods.
How humans do it
The truly delightful thing about people is our ability to generate self-perpetuating cycles of damage. Eat too much; get fat; lose sleep over your increasing obesity; stress out and eat more food and the wrong kinds of it; get fatter, etc.
Sleep debt has been attributed to “insomnia, stress, social pressures, desire to get more work accomplished, night-shift work, medications used to treat colds, allergies, pain and cardiovascular problems, and modern-living habits such as late-night TV viewing and use of the internet.” Those add up to a lot of variables, making it much more difficult to track the consequences of sleep deprivation in the wild. But it is said that…
Epidemiological research studies as well as wide-scale polling by the National Sleep Foundation (NSF) suggest that American adolescents and adults are chronically sleep deprived.
The NSF survey found that “individuals that self-reported to be short sleepers (less than 6 hours a night on workdays) were significantly more likely to be obese than those that self-reported to be normal or long sleepers (8 hours or more on workdays).”
There has been controversy over the effects of physical activity. An entire area of curiosity on this topic has to do with sleep apnea and other sleep-related breathing disorders. Then, there is a confusing relationship between too much sleep, not enough sleep, and mortality rates, and the additional relationship between those factors and obesity. Also, according to a major study, “African Americans had substantially higher obesity rates than did European Americans,” and…
The possibility that differences in sleep duration can contribute to the higher incidence of obesity among minority populations is supported by a recent finding by Hale and Do (2007). In this study of over 32,000 adults in the United States, the investigators found a higher risk of short (<6) and of long (>9) sleep hours, both extremes attributed to increased rate of health problems, in black vs. white respondents.
A notable conclusion from numerous studies all over the world is that “Sleep debt may have the most potent and adverse effects on body weight in children and adolescents.”
Your responses and feedback are welcome!
Source: “Ten putative contributors to the obesity epidemic,” ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, November 2009
Image by Jon Tyson on Unsplash
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