[url]http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/01/health/sleep-curbs-obesity-genes/index.html?npt=NP1[/url]
[quote]Health.com) -- If you're genetically predisposed to be overweight, the amount of sleep you get each night could make a big difference in how influential those genes are, a new study suggests.
After analyzing the sleep habits and body weight of 1,088 pairs of twins, including genetically identical ones, researchers concluded that people who get plenty of sleep -- at least nine hours per night -- have more control over their weight through their behavior than people who sleep less.
Among twins who slept less than seven hours per night, genes accounted for 70% of the differences in body mass index (BMI), while so-called environmental factors, such as diet and exercise habits, were responsible for just 4% of the differences.
The pattern was reversed among twins who slept nine or more hours per night. In this group, environmental factors accounted for 51% of BMI differences and genes accounted for just 32%.
Health.com: How much sleep do you really need?
Getting adequate sleep, in other words, appears to dampen genetic risk and allow the influence of diet, exercise, and other controllable lifestyle factors to "surface," the researchers say.
"The less you sleep, the more important genetic factors are to how much you weigh," says lead author Nathaniel F. Watson, M.D., co-director of the University of Washington Medicine Sleep Center, in Seattle. "The longer you sleep, the greater the influence of environmental factors like meal composition and timing."
Previous research has found that too little sleep is associated with a higher BMI, but many of those studies haven't been able to entirely rule out the possibility that genes, or complicating factors such as sleep disorders, are partly responsible for the link.
Twin studies, by contrast, allow researchers to tease out the complex relationship between genes and environment. Identical twins share the exact same DNA, so most differences in weight can be attributed to environment rather than genes. And fraternal twins, though genetically dissimilar, tend to share the same background and risk factors. (All of the twins in the study, both identical and fraternal, were raised in the same household.)
Health.com: 7 tips for the best sleep ever
The new study, which appears in the journal SLEEP, suggests that "the amount of sleep you get has an effect on your gene expression," says Michael Weissberg, M.D., a sleep specialist and professor of psychiatry at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, in Denver.
Researchers have identified more than 20 genes that are linked to obesity risk through their effects on appetite, blood sugar (glucose) metabolism, and other channels, but it's not clear which specific genes were at play in the study.
"Based on previous research, it's probably related to glucose metabolism, metabolism in general, inflammation -- all pathways that we already know are associated with obesity," Watson says.
Health.com: Surprising health benefits of sleep
Sleep deprivation puts stress on your body, and that stress could help explain the relationship between sleep and gene expression seen in the study, says Carl Boethel, M.D., director of the Sleep Institute at Scott & White Healthcare, in Temple, Texas.
"When you are constantly depriving yourself of sleep, you are keeping yourself in a state of stress, and the genes that encode for that stressful environment start saying, 'I need to hold on to calories,'" Boethel says.
The study doesn't answer the question of whether you can "sleep yourself thin," Watson says, but it does highlight the importance of adequate sleep to overall health.
"We spend so much time in this country trying to keep our weight down with diet and exercise, but we never think about sleep," he says. "I think of sleep as the third leg on the stool of good health, along with diet and exercise."[/quote]
Oh god we're all gonna be fat.
Maybe I really should sleep more.
9 hours? That sucks, I have trouble sleeping more than 6 at a time, regardless of what I do.
I hate how the body handles sleep, why can't we just shut ourselves off at will? :v:
I sleep between 9 and 11 hours no matter what I fucking do. I have 2 alarm clocks and 1 alarm clock program on my computer, which is set to go off an additional 4 times.
I sleep like a baby through it all.
[QUOTE=Mr. Someguy;35784316]9 hours? That sucks, I have trouble sleeping more than 6 at a time, regardless of what I do.
I hate how the body handles sleep, why can't we just shut ourselves off at will? :v:[/QUOTE]
Likely because we fill ourselves with processed sugars, caffeine and other terrible things.
I sleep like 15 hours if no one wakes me up.
I don't think that's good though.
Dunno, makes sense in my head but if you are tired all day it's mostly your body who tells you when and what to eat, where as if you are fully rested it is more your rational thinking that takes over and makes you eat healthy and in the required intervals.
Shit, I get to bed at around 12:00am-1:00am each night then get up at around 6:50-7:00 for high school. Funny thing is the school decided to begin school an hour later last year saying students perform better when they get more sleep, so the only thing that resulted was everyone shifted their day ahead an hour and everything stayed the same.
There just isn't enough time in the day to do what I want. I procrastinate sleep basically, on top of many other things.
I'm asleep by 12 usually and wake up at 7:30 or 8:00 most of the time
Not having to go to work until 9 is nice
I typically sleep between four and twelve hours a night.
I don't know what that means for me.
sleepwhatsthatigetbyjustfineoncoffee
Sleep is for people who've run out of shit to do on the internet.
Since September 2011, I've slept for 6 hours a day [B]max.[/B]
I'm actually surprised my synapses haven't plotted against me yet.
[QUOTE=Mr. Someguy;35784316]9 hours? That sucks, I have trouble sleeping more than 6 at a time, regardless of what I do.
I hate how the body handles sleep, why can't we just shut ourselves off at will? :v:[/QUOTE]
I think it would be cooler to just not have to sleep.
i usually get 4 hours of sleep on weekdays, but 10 hours on weekends
i'm not sure how good that is for my body
[QUOTE=Tigster;35784707]Likely because we fill ourselves with processed sugars, caffeine and other terrible things.[/QUOTE]
Probably true. I practice a super healthy diet and I sleep very well. Then again, I don't have much information about my prior sleep habits to compare to, but I'm sure it's one of the reasons I sleep so well.
Maybe it's time I started investing in sleeping pills. Insomnia is a bitch.
[QUOTE=Joyful Mystery;35785492]Maybe it's time I started investing in sleeping pills. Insomnia is a bitch.[/QUOTE]
Take a 30 minute rest off the computer before going to bed.
Go to bed at the same time every day - wake up at the same time every day.
Don't eat ~2 hours before going to bed. Ensure you drink lots of water and brush your teeth before going to bed.
Don't drink anything with caffeine in and avoid any drug that helps you sleep.
Actually article is very misleading. More sleep doesn't help, being more concious of being healthy is.
They have found a [b]correlation[/b] between sleeping more and weighing less.
Not a [b]causation[/b].
People who get healthy sleep tend to be more healthy in other ways :)
[QUOTE=Rhenae;35785637]Actually article is very misleading. More sleep doesn't help, being more concious of being healthy is.
They have found a [b]correlation[/b] between sleeping more and weighing less.
Not a [b]causation[/b].
People who get healthy sleep tend to be more healthy in other ways :)[/QUOTE]
it's been said for years though that lack of sleep can cause obesity
obese gene? so it's not my diet! im just naturally fat!
[QUOTE=Tigster;35784707]Likely because we fill ourselves with processed sugars, caffeine and other terrible things.[/QUOTE]
Caffeine has a biological half life of 5 hours, so as long as you're not ingesting massive amounts of caffeine in the 5 or so hours running up to you sleeping you should be relatively okay. A cup of coffee at 6 or 7 PM isn't going to stop you sleeping at midnight.
For the past 8 or so weeks I've been running on 4-5 hours of sleep per night because of my retarded uni timetable. I've had to take the day off today just so I can get this fucking assignment done because if I had gone to uni instead of sleeping in by the time I got home I'd be too fucking tired to do anything, and then tomorrow I have work directly after uni (which is when the assignment is due in). I hope like all hell I have a better time table next semester - sleep deprivation is making my grades slip.
I'm allergic to coffee, and I also have real problems sleeping, I normally need to sleep 8-10 hours a night or I feel like rubbish the next day but I cant seem to get to sleep until 2-3am every night.
My biggest issue is probably that my bed is where I do everything while I'm in my room...Its my computer chair, where I read/watch TV and eat etc. I probably should have learned to associate bed with sleeping and I might have been able to sleep easier.
[QUOTE=Cushie;35791756]I'm allergic to coffee, and I also have real problems sleeping, I normally need to sleep 8-10 hours a night or I feel like rubbish the next day but I cant seem to get to sleep until 2-3am every night.
My biggest issue is probably that my bed is where I do everything while I'm in my room...Its my computer chair, where I read/watch TV and eat etc. I probably should have learned to associate bed with sleeping and I might have been able to sleep easier.[/QUOTE]
I don't get much sleep usually, but I always find doing something like sleeping with the window open to let the room cool down and make my bed seem warmer. Probably one of the most avoidable things you could do would be to start taking your meals at the table instead of your room, plus i hate trying to sleep with the smell of food around :v:
I go to school in the morning and by the time I get back home, I'm deadbeat tired so I take a rather long ass nap before heading off to work.
I get back around 10:30 and I spend the rest of the night doing homework and whatnot so I normally max out at four hours of sleep.
So I guess my future offspring are going to be fat as fuck.
I love sleeping for 12 solid hours on my day off.
Although, it's slightly depressing waking up at 2 in the afternoon, with so little time remaining in the day to do things.
The fuck 9 hours??? I only get 4-5 a night the fuck is this shit. If I try sleeping more than 4-5 I wake up feeling like shit.
I think that exercise and the right diet is more important than a few hours more sleep.
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