Everyone knows how important getting a good night’s sleep is, but what actually happens when we close our eyes and drift off to sleep?
There are a whole variety of negative health connotations associated with poor sleep quality, so below we will briefly touch on a few of the main ones to hopefully help you understand the issue slightly better. Firstly, an interesting study from the University of Chicago on individuals looking to lose weight following a calorie-restricted diet at the same time as monitoring their sleep.
Two groups were studied, one was sleep deprived only gaining 5.5 hours sleep, whilst the other group on exactly the same diet but getting 8.5 hours sleep found that at the end of the study, they’d lost 55% more body fat simply from sleeping more.
Now this goes against the modern-day dogma of doing more to achieve your goals and in many ways sounds counterintuitive, as how does doing less (i.e. sleeping) actually give you more in terms of burning fat.
This isn’t just a question of sleeping more, we need to sleep smarter. What actually happens whilst we sleep that enhances everything that we do, and becomes some kind of elixir to our health, fitness and longevity?
So, for today let’s talk about a few hormones that may be having an effect on your sleep and health.
HGH (Human Growth Hormone) is an extremely powerful hormone that you will produce during the first part of your sleep cycle, and which helps to produce more lean muscle. It’s also muscle sparing and helps to protect the muscle that you already have. HGH also helps to increase energy levels and is known as the “Fountain of Youth” as you will have naturally higher levels during childhood.
Sleep is the key here, as you won’t increase your levels from a supplement that claims to “Increase HGH by 555%”, but you will increase levels by getting a good night’s sleep.
The second hormone that we need to look at is cortisol, which has become a bit of a buzzword and bogeyman of late. Cortisol is responsible for a whole variety of metabolic functions such as helping to regulate your thyroid hormone.
The thyroid regulates nearly every major metabolic function within your body, and as such, a poor functioning thyroid can have a detrimental effect on nearly every area of your health. For instance, weight gain, reduced metabolic rate, fatigue, feeling depressed or moody, dry hair and skin and much more. Cortisol is our friend for most of the time; it only becomes an issue if it’s produced at the wrong time and in the wrong amount.
Sleep deprivation has an immediate effect with an increase in cortisol levels and a decrease in HGH production. So, if you’re staying up late, and burning the midnight oil checking your emails then your cortisol levels will be increased significantly, and you will literally be breaking down your muscle tissue for energy at an elevated rate. This process is called gluconeogenesis, where you will be breaking down your valuable muscle tissue into sugar (glucose).
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