A recent American study suggests that extending your sleep time by one hour per night would help you stay in shape. This research further confirms the link between sleep and weight.
Do you have to sleep well to hope to keep a correct weight? According to some studies, this seems desirable. In 2018, studies claimed that a restricted sleep time promotes weight gain and lean mass loss in humans. In 2021, other research concluded that newborns sleeping better would be less at risk of overweight and obesity.
A new study published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine on February 7, 2022 provides new information. According to doctors and nutritionists from the University of Chicago (USA), sleep an hour more per night helps you lose weight. This work includes a randomized clinical trial involving overweight people aged 21 to 40. The goal? Make these volunteers eat less and sleep more in order to observe any changes.
Study participants habitually slept less than 6.5 hours per night. However, it was possible to allow them to sleep up to 8.5 hours a night for some following a personalized advice session about sleep hygiene. This test group was compared with a control group. According to the results, the test group members saw their overall daily calorie intake drop by 270 calories on average.
The study therefore shows that without changing your eating habits , calorie intake can be varied simply by sleeping an extra hour or two per night. Indeed, the doctors did not formulate any restrictions concerning the quantities or the nature of the food. In addition, the experience took place outside of a medical setting. Indeed, the volunteers simply followed the advice of the researchers and slept in their own bed at home. In addition, it was possible for them to track their sleep using connected devices.
Scientists have determined their calorie intake using the so-called double-labeled water method . The latter consists of having participants drink water in which rarer stable isotopes such as oxygen-18 and deuterium replace the usual hydrogen and oxygen atoms. The fact is that oxygen-18 is eliminated faster than deuterium. However, this difference in elimination speed is linked to the production of CO2. The researchers measured this difference in the urine before calculating the participants' CO2 production and energy expenditure using mass spectrometry.
In total, the study lasted four weeks. Half of the time allowed the collection of information on sleep and calorie intake of volunteers. So the other half was to monitor the effects of the changes.
In short, sleeping one or two more hours a night could allow you to lose no less than twelve kilograms in three years with relatively little effort.
