People who don’t get enough sleep every night are more likely to have a big belly, a new study suggests.
The excess fat that builds up around the torso and surrounds vital organs is called visceral fat — and it contributes to a beer belly and unwanted apple body shape.
An international team of scientists collected health data from more than 5,000 adults – half male, half female, who participated in two rounds of the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey in 2011 and 2013. Participants rated their sleep from one hour to 12.
The average age of the participants was about 37 years old and the average amount of sleep they got was just under seven hours. One hour less sleep, a goal of seven to eight hours, was linked to an overall increase of about 12 grams of visceral fat mass.
Visceral fat is the most dangerous type, leaking fatty acids into the bloodstream. It differs from the less dangerous subcutaneous fat that accumulates just below the surface of the skin and is responsible for shaky fat and cellulite.
Getting enough sleep, ideally about eight hours a night, was associated with a lower concentration of dangerous visceral fat that forms around the organs. The benefit seemed to wear off after eight hours
Subcutaneous fat (left) is more visible outside the body and fills the outer layers of muscle just below the skin. People with more of this fat get a ‘pear-shaped’ body. People with more visceral fat (right), which is more dangerous but less noticeable, are at increased risk for many metabolic diseases
Getting too little sleep leads to abnormal regulation of activity in various parts of the brain that affect the reward center, sleep and appetite, which may explain the link between sleep deprivation and visceral body fat storage.
Insufficient sleep leads to insulin resistance, which many scientists have suggested is related to high visceral fat.
Too much visceral fat likely increases a person’s risk of serious metabolic conditions, including high blood pressure, obesity, high cholesterol and insulin resistance, all of which increase a person’s risk of heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes.
It contributes to a rich body of research pointing to the link between sleep, excess fat and weight gain. The team noted that their study is the first to provide a comprehensive picture of how sleep duration affects fat storage in different parts of the body.
Dr. Panagiotis Giannos said: “Our study adds to emerging evidence suggesting a prominent link between sleep deprivation and weight gain, which could be clinically significant, as visceral adiposity is associated with metabolic problems such as insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. .”
Sleep deprivation is believed to cause a simultaneous decrease in leptin — the hormone that reduces appetite — and an increase in the hormone ghrelin, which signals to the brain that it’s time to eat.
It also causes the orexin system, which affects food intake and sleep patterns, to go haywire. This, the researchers suggest, could explain the higher caloric intake and subsequent weight gain due to sleep restriction.
The study, published in the journal Sleep medicineused data from two US-led health and nutrition studies conducted in 2011–2012 and 2013–2014, involving a total of 5,151 people between the ages of 18 and 59.
The team of scientists used X-rays to calculate people’s regional body fat percentages and sent them home with questionnaires asking them how much sleep they got on a scale of 1 to 12, with 1 indicating only an hour of sleep and 12 indicating at least 12 hours of sleep. . sleep.
The average amount of sleep among the subjects was just under seven hours. The researchers also revealed that the sleep duration benefit diminished after eight hours.
Last spring, researchers at the Mayo Clinic studied how restricted sleep combined with free access to food drove up calorie consumption and consequently fat accumulation, especially unhealthy abdominal fat, in 12 healthy subjects.
A lack of adequate sleep led to a nine percent increase in total abdominal fat area and an 11 percent increase in abdominal visceral fat, compared to the control group.
In 2019, a team of scientists from Pennsylvania State University reported that restricting sleep to just a few days a week changes the way our bodies metabolize fats and changes how satisfied a person feels after a meal.
The study involved 15 healthy men in their 20s who slept about 10 hours a night at home for a week, followed by a 10-day stay in a suite at the Clinical Research Center at Penn State, where they ate high-calorie meals and slept for no more. than five hours per night for four consecutive nights.
Sleep restriction led to higher insulin levels, changing the way the body metabolizes fat.
Despite the importance of getting enough sleep for mental and physical well-being, more than a third of Americans don’t do it regularly. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other public health experts recommend that adults get at least seven hours of sleep per night.
For as many as 70 million Americans, which is easier said than done. About as many people have a sleep disorder that causes chronic sleep deprivation and negatively impacts a person’s quality of life. Some of those conditions include chronic insomnia, sleep-wake cycle disorders that throw the body’s internal clock out of whack, sleepwalking, and sleep apnea.