In order to stay in shape and not get ill, it is extremely important to sleep. When I saw this headline, I was like, “well duh, sleeping is important. I know that.” But as I read into this interesting research outcome, I found very interesting facts so you better read through this!

Research shows that people who sleep 7 to 8 hours a day have the lowest obesity index than anyone else. Compared to people who get 5 hours of sleep, their obesity index is 50% lower, and for those of you who get 4 hours of sleep, 75% lower. That means, the less you sleep, the higher the tendency to get obese.

But why? The reason is because of the unbalance of the hormones reptine and ghrelin. Reptine is the hormone produced by fat cells that controls your appetite, and ghrelin produced by your stomach increases your appetite. So, if you don’t get enough sleep, reptine will decrease and ghrelin will decrease. People who get 5 hours of sleep compared to 8 hours of sleep, they have 16% less of reptine and 15% more of ghrelin, which means it, increases your appetite and prefer higher calorie foods.

Lack of sleep is one of the biggest enemies to a diet, but it’s not too late. After a reducing sleeping experiment, the examinees took 10 hours of sleep for two days and the hormone balance got back to normal. Also, the rate of craving food got 25% lower.

So sleep well to stay in shape.

Bibliography:
Satoru Tsubota. Japanese medical association, the sleeping society of Japan.