SLEEP DISORDER CAN CAUSE WEIGHT GAIN

During younger years, i thought less sleep can make one lose weight. Hence, if one would like to reduce those unwanted fats, sleep less and in no time, you could lose weight. However, when i entered the call centre industry, this belief had been challenged. Having to work at night, i have to sleep in the morning. It is difficult to sleep when the sun is still up. I have to force myself to get up in the middle of the night because it is time for me to work. The result, I sleep less compared to the number of hours i slept when i was working in day time. For me, it took a lot of adjustments to force my body to embrace this odd schedule. My eating habits did not change though. However, i noticed that i am continuously gaining weight. Something i could not stop. I should be losing weight considering i had less sleep. Instead, i gained weight. Why is that?

I am able to name two hormones that were able to answer my question. One is Leptin. Leptin is a hormone in our body that is responsible with our appetite, metabolism and burning of our stored calories. Leptin transmits a message to our brain when our stomach is already full and our intestines are already busy working. It tells our brain it is time to burn those stored calories we took through our food intake. During sleep, leptin level increases. It transmits a message to our brain that we have enough energy and does not need to eat. However, if we have a habit of sleeping less than we should. Leptin decreases. Hence, it triggers a message to our brain that we should store energy in the form of food though there is still stored energy in our body. It makes us feel hungry. More so, drop of leptin in our body slows down our metabolism. We know that when our metabolism decreases its working capacity, there is a greater tendency to gain weight because our body can not burn those unwanted calories the way it normally does.

Another hormone that triggers weight gain if we have unstable sleeping habit is ghrelin . Ghrelin is a hormone that transmits message to our brain that it should already stop burning those calories. It tells our brain when our stored energy should be converted into fat. During sleep, ghrelin decreases. This is so because during sleep our body does not require energy as much as when we are awake. Less sleep causes an increased level of ghrelin. Just imagine if ghrelin would transmit to our brain to store our stored energy into fat- on its higher level. Theoretically speaking, can i safely state that it falls under messing up our body clock? Maybe.....maybe not!

Do you know that continuous unstable sleeping habit- under the above factors given- can lead to obesity? If i may point out, obesity is already considered a disease. Let us remove vanity at this point. Let us focus on health. Excessive unwanted fat can cause a lot of illness. To name a few, hypertension, diabetes and more. As i did state in one of my previous entries, proper sleeping is as important as eating and regular exercise. We have only one borrowed physical body. A television series, supernatural, calls it meat suit or vessel. I think we owe it to our selves and to the One who allowed us to borrow this body while we are in this life to take care of it. If we are not religious, let us look at the practical side of the situation. No one can deny that we do not have a spare body to use. If we are practical, we would ensure that this body could function well for us for as long as we are still in our journey in this life, right? I believe no one would like to live bearing a limited physical capability due to illness. As i had realized only recently, health is actually our wealth.

Always take care.