Tag Archives: Poor Sleep

Science: How The Lack Of Sleep Makes You Hungrier

Did you know that not getting enough zzz’s can actually make you hungrier? According to sleep scientist Matt Walker, the relationship between what you eat and your sleep is a two-way street. Here’s why understanding it can help you improve your overall health.

Sleep — we spend one-third of our lives doing it, but what exactly do we get out of it? And how can we do it better? In this TED series, sleep scientist Matt Walker uncovers the facts and secrets behind our nightly slumber. (Made possible with the support of Oura) Check out more episodes on TED.com: https://go.ted.com/sleepingwithscience

Society: Sleep Industry Helps Consumers “Sleep Less, More Productively” As Their Health Worsens

From a The Architectural Review online article (April 9, 2020):

The Long Sleep by Briton RiviereThe sleep industry caters to a working consumer’s wish to sleep less, yet sleep more productively, and accommodates transnational industry which has joined the state as a custodian of biopolitics. Jonathan Crary’s 24/7 spells out in detail how the state and a capitalist economy are encroaching stupendously on the private sphere, in which sleep was one of the last vestiges of unfettered time.

About 15 years ago, someone calculated the financial loss US companies incurred through workers’ illicit practice of sleeping on the job. Indeed, the trope of the lazy sleeper is an old one, resignified at present in our more than callous attitude towards the homeless, whose sleeping bodies punctuate many a journey to and from work.

Even in this most passive stance – someone simply disregarding normative codes and regulations by giving in to a physical need – sleep seems suspiciously subversive. Less an act than a way of being, the sleeper, by sleeping when and where it is not condoned, challenges everyone else, who is doing/working/functioning/functionalised. Contrary to the tree falling in the forest, the sleeper in the workplace or in public space affects and thus ever so slightly transforms those around them.

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Study: Added Sugars In Diet Lowers Sleep Quality For Women, Increasing Heart Disease Risks (AHA)

Journal of the American Heart Association study (Feb 17, 2020):

American Heart Association AHA logoThe association between poor overall sleep quality and greater consumption of added sugars observed in the current study aligns with previous findings that intakes of confectionary and sugar‐sweetened beverages were higher in middle‐aged Japanese women reporting poor, compared with good, sleep quality.

Background – Poor sleep increases cardiovascular disease risk, and diet likely contributes to this relationship. However, there are limited epidemiological data on the relationship between measures of sleep quality and habitual dietary patterns. This study examined these associations in a diverse sample of women.

Both short sleep duration and poor sleep quality are associated with the development of obesity, type 2 diabetes mellitus, and cardiovascular disease (CVD), and it is likely that the relationship between sleep and cardiometabolic disease risk is partially mediated by diet.5 Indeed, experimental studies demonstrate that restricting sleep duration leads to increases in energy intake, confirming associations of short sleep with higher energy intakes in observational population‐based studies.

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Health Studies: Poor Sleep Associated With Non-Alzheimer’s Dementia And Impaired Cognition

From a University of Toronto Medicine article:

University of Toronto Medicine“There are two important takeaways from this paper. One is that poor sleep is associated with brain immune dysregulation or dysfunction,” says Lim, the corresponding author for the paper.

“The second part is that dysfunction appears to be further associated with impaired cognition.”

The study shows that in adults with fragmented sleep – where people were waking up repeatedly instead of sleeping soundly – there was an effect on microglia, and the cells showed signs of accelerated aging and other abnormalities.

The researchers were then able to identify that these changes in the microglia could be associated with worse cognition in older adults, both with and without Alzheimer’s disease.

To read full study: https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/12/eaax7331

To read more: https://medicine.utoronto.ca/news/research-suggests-fragmented-sleep-may-affect-brain-s-immune-cells-impair-cognition