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(HealthNewsDigest.com) – It is estimated that nearly half of American adults are sleep deprived, getting less than seven hours of sleep each night. So we don’t sleep enough, so what. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) this chronic lack of sleep is a public health epidemic. It increases the risk for accidents, memory loss, obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and some forms of cancer. Over half of those with chronic sleep deprivation actually believe they are getting enough rest and have no idea this habit will have long term consequences for their weight and health.
Sleeping too little is connected to:
- Consuming more calories
- Drinking less water
- Eating fewer vegetables
- Eating less carbohydrates which could reduce whole grain intake
- Lower intakes of vitamin C found in citrus fruits, broccoli, peppers, and strawberries
- Lower intakes of the mineral selenium found in nuts, shellfish and meat
- Eating more high fat food
- Eating more fast food
- Drinking more soda
- Increased feelings of hunger and lower rating of satisfaction after eating
- Overeating in the evening and during late night hours
- Less impulse control when it comes to food
Staying up too late and waking up too early disrupts your internal biological clocks. Humans work on a 24-hour cycle controlled by the body’s circadian clocks. These internal clocks are triggered by two major pathways — light or food. The circadian clock in the brain is set by light and tells people to wake up in the morning and sleep when it is dark. Working the night shift, swing shifts, irregular hours, or having jet lag will cause one’s circadian clocks to get out of sync causing disruptions in both sleeping and eating patterns.
The workings of your body’s biological clocks are very complex, composed of many interacting genes that turn the clocks on and off in an orchestrated way to keep time with the 24-hour cycle of a day. Your food clock helps you make the most efficient use of the food you eat. Over thousands of years of evolution the food clock encouraged people to eat during the day which was the prime time for foraging and hunting.
The action of insulin, a hormone made in the pancreas, follows a 24-hour cycle that can be disrupted if the body’s food clock is thrown out of sync by lack of sleep. When we eat, carbohydrates are broken down into the simple sugar glucose. Insulin transfers glucose into your body’s cells to be used for energy which removes excess sugar from the blood. Cells are more sensitive to insulin (better able to transfer glucose out of the blood and into the cells) during waking hours and more insulin resistant during our inactive or resting phase (when we sleep). Glucose is converted into fat during the resting phase (night) and used for energy during the active phase (daytime).
When we stay up at night and attempt to rest during the day circadian rhythms are disrupted. By working with mice which have a very similar circadian cycle, researchers discovered that when the circadian clocks are thrown off, the mice get locked into the inactive phase. They became more insulin resistant which means they developed a higher amount of body fat and gained weight because they are more likely to store glucose than burn it for energy. The researchers also found that high fat diets disrupted circadian clocks to default to the inactive fat storing phase. All this could explain what we have observed for years that those who work the night shift tend to be at higher risk for obesity and diabetes. Chronic desynchronization of our biological clocks puts people at increased risk for diabetes, heart disease, sleep disorders, depression, infertility, and some cancers.
Research done at the University of Utah (http://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/content/early/2014/10/06/db14-0646.abstract) showed that the liver’s circadian clock is set by food and is sensitive to iron. Judith A. Simcox, PhD found that iron sets the timing of the liver clock. When a shift worker eats foods high in iron (liver, beef, oysters, turkey, tuna, fortified ready-to-eat cereal, soybeans, beans, and tofu) it causes the brain and liver clocks to go out of sync, disrupting the body’s normal day to night fluctuations that are needed to maintain health. Too little iron is also a problem, but too much, especially when eaten during normal sleeping hours creates problems too. Dr. Simcox’s research is trying to define the optimal amount.
It is obvious that more research is needed on how too little sleep affects our health. What we do know is that sleep, health and body weight are all connected. All the evidence is pointing toward – sleep well, eat well, be well.
To learn more go to: http://www.nigms.nih.gov/Education/Pages/Factsheet_CircadianRhythms.aspx
© NRH Nutrition Consultants, Inc.
Jo-Ann Heslin, MA, RD, CDN is a registered dietitian and the author of the nutrition counter series for Pocket Books with sales of more than 8.5 million books.
Look for:
The Diabetes Counter, 5th Ed., 2014
The Fat and Cholesterol Counter, 2014
The Most Complete Food Counter, 3rd ed., 2013
The Calorie Counter, 6th Ed., 2013
The Complete Food Counter, 4th ed., 2012
The Protein Counter, 3rd Ed., 2011
The Ultimate Carbohydrate Counter, 3rd Ed., 2010
The Healthy Wholefoods Counter, 2008
Your Complete Food Counter App: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/your-complete-food-counter/id444558777?mt=8
For more information on Jo-Ann and her books, go to: www.TheNutritionExperts.com.
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