Medically reviewed by
Dacelin St Martin, MD
Triple board-certified in Sleep Medicine,
Internal Medicine, and Pediatrics.
The Study: Sleep Duration and Weight Gain | How Sleeplessness Causes Weight Gain | The Significance of the Study | The Next Steps
Overview
The importance of adequate and quality sleep for health can’t be overstated. It’s crucial for a healthy mind, an incredible physique, and a healthy body.
Fitness experts have always suggested sleep as a requisite to weight loss and maintaining a healthy physique. New research shows that less than eight hours of sleep can cause beer-belly—an accumulation of fat around the internal organs leading to abdominal obesity, with far-reaching health consequences like hypertension, diabetes, ischemic heart diseases, and stroke.[1]
This article will discuss this exciting discovery and explain how sleep deprivation causes beer belly.
The Study: Sleep Duration and Weight Gain
Emerging evidence from excellent research shows a strong relationship between sleep duration and weight gain.
The ground-breaking study published in the Journal of Sleep Medicine aimed to explore the link between sleep duration and regional body fat distribution in adult Americans.[1]
For the study, the researchers obtained data from the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (a database containing information on Americans’ health and nutritional status) for 2011-2012 and 2013-2014.
The research included more than 5100 adults between 18 and 59. Furthermore, the duration of sleep by the study participants was assessed through an in-house interview questionnaire using the Computer Assisted Interviewing System.
Also, X-ray technology was utilized to evaluate the level of regional fat accumulation in different parts of the body, particularly the abdomen, limbs, and trunk.
The study findings revealed that getting 7-8 hours of sleep every day reduces abdominal weight gain. Conversely, it also showed that less sleep leads to increased visceral fat mass, with just 1 hour of sleep loss resulting in 12 grams of visceral fat gain.[1]
How Sleeplessness Causes Weight Gain
Experts have suggested several mechanisms by which sleep restriction causes an increased accumulation of belly.
One such primary process relates to an imbalance of appetite-regulating hormones. Sleep loss is associated with raised leptin blood levels (the hormone responsible for satiety) and increased Ghrelin blood levels (the hunger hormone).[2] These elevated hormone levels cause an increased feeling of hunger even when energy levels are sufficient.
Another essential mechanism relates to neural dysregulation. Studies have shown that sleep loss impacts several brain centers regulating bodily mechanisms.
One such brain center of particular importance is the appetite evaluation center in the frontal cortex, which assesses food desirability.[3] This brain center is blunted by sleep restriction, resulting in a raised desire for high-calorie foods, leading to weight gain.[3}
Furthermore, insufficient sleep may counteract the normal body responses to adipose tissue accumulation. This physiological reaction may occur due to increased insulin resistance, reduction in glucose tolerance, and the associated compensatory raised insulin blood levels.
Importantly, studies have indicated that individuals with short-term sleep duration (~5.5 hrs/day) have reduced body fat losses compared to counterparts with adequate sleep (~8.5 hrs/day).[4]
The Significance of the Study
The study showed that sleep restriction significantly contributes to abdominal obesity in male and female American populations. This finding is significant because obesity is typically associated with metabolic abnormalities, such as insulin resistance, Type-2 diabetes mellitus, and other attendant risks of these conditions, such as cardiovascular dysfunction.
The findings of this study are corroborated by another research by the European Society of Cardiology.[5]
They found that individuals who slept fewer than 5 hours are 74 percent more likely to have peripheral artery disease than those who have adequate sleep, i.e., seven to eight hours per night.
In addition, earlier studies have indicated that increasing sleep deprivation increases the risk of developing Alzheimer’s and dementia, especially later in life, and poorer cognitive performance.[6]
The study’s findings are all the more important when viewed in light of another fantastic research last year in which experts discovered that nearly 50 percent of Americans have some degree of sleep deprivation, with 1 in 3 hybrid workers having to nap during work hours.[7]
This finding can be juxtaposed with the projections by the World Obesity Organization, which posits that 50 percent of the world’s population will be obese or overweight by 2035.[8]
The Next Steps
While the Journal of Sleep Medicine study shows a link between sleep to the amount of visceral fat accumulation in adults, the scientists reiterated the need for further research to confirm with greater accuracy the findings of their study, as well as the causes, and to provide solutions to counteract the adverse effects of sleep deprivation on body fat composition.
References:
- Giannos, P., Prokopidis, K., Candow, D. G., Forbes, S. C., Celoch, K., Isanejad, M., Pekovic-Vaughan, V., Witard, O. C., Gabriel, B. M., & Scott, D. (2023). Shorter sleep duration is associated with greater visceral fat mass in US adults: Findings from NHANES, 2011-2014. Sleep Medicine, 105, 78–84. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleep.2023.03.013van Egmond, L. T., Meth, E. M. S., Engström, J., Ilemosoglou, M., Keller, J. A., Vogel, H., & Benedict, C. (2023). Effects of acute sleep loss on leptin, ghrelin, and adiponectin in adults with healthy weight and obesity: A laboratory study. Obesity (Silver Spring, Md.), 31(3), 635–641. https://doi.org/10.1002/oby.23616
- Greer, S. M., Goldstein, A. N., & Walker, M. P. (2013). The impact of sleep deprivation on food desire in the human brain. Nature communications, 4, 2259. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms3259
- Papatriantafyllou, E., Efthymiou, D., Zoumbaneas, E., Popescu, C. A., & Vassilopoulou, E. (2022). Sleep Deprivation: Effects on Weight Loss and Weight Loss Maintenance. Nutrients, 14(8), 1549. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu14081549
- Yuan, S., Levin, M. G., Titova, O. E., Chen, J., Sun, Y., Million Veteran Program, V. A., Åkesson, A., Li, X., Damrauer, S. M., & Larsson, S. C. (2023). Sleep duration, daytime napping, and risk of peripheral artery disease: multinational cohort and Mendelian randomization studies. European Heart Journal Open, 3(2), oead008. https://doi.org/10.1093/ehjopen/oead008
- Gaur, A., Kaliappan, A., Balan, Y., Sakthivadivel, V., Medala, K., & Umesh, M. (2022). Sleep and Alzheimer: The Link. Maedica, 17(1), 177–185. https://doi.org/10.26574/maedica.2022.17.1.177
- Di, H., Guo, Y., Daghlas, I., Wang, L., Liu, G., Pan, A., Liu, L., & Shan, Z. (2022). Evaluation of sleep habits and disturbances among US adults, 2017-2020. JAMA Network Open, 5(11), e2240788. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.40788
- Economic impact of overweight and obesity to surpass $4 trillion by 2035. (n.d.). World Obesity Federation. Retrieved May 22, 2023, from https://www.worldobesity.org/news/economic-impact-of-overweight-and-obesity-to-surpass-4-trillion-by-2035
