You would think that staying in a more wakeful state longer would mean you burn more calories.
And it does.
-But only for awhile.
Then you go downhill.
In an experiment conducted by Ken Wright and the Department of ChronoBiology at UC-Boulder, they found that metabolism was up by about 7% above normal while people were kept up.
BUT: It was down 5% below normal when people were allowed to recover from deprivation, and it stayed down longer.
[NOTE: For God’s sakes, do not try to read the backward-writing & circuitous-jargon in the UC@B link. They use all the wrong terminology.
They should’ve spoken in-terms of Metabolism Up/Down and ~maybe Calories Burned/Unburned.
Malapropianly-positive terms like “saved” are useless and confusing for people who aren’t professional thermodynamicists.
-If you’ve got any extra fat, “saving” calories instead of unsaving them is not a positive thing.
Just stick with the Higher/Lower than average & you’ll get the right takeaways.]
Now, that’s just their [admittedly short] study results. But here are my guesses and the ideas Dr. Ken seems to hint at (to be supplemented in a later post, I’m sure):
1) The participants were only allowed 8 hours sleep on Recovery Day.
That is Not an option any normal person would take. -They’d go for more like 10 or 11 hours.
So: because of that, they’d burn even LESS calories on Recovery Day(s) than they did in the study.
And there is no reason Recovery would be limited to either 1 day or 8 hours total.
2) People in Chronic sleep debt are (probably) in Long-Term Recovery Mode.
And day, after day, after day of having a 5% lower metabolism 16+ hours per day,
but a similar mentality or habits about eating, will just pack on the pounds even more as time drags on.
3) Energy Levels & Activity will be lower. Again, to minimize variation, these studiers had everyone do exactly the same thing: stay still in bed.
-But in normal people, they’re probably going to move around Less than if they were perfectly-rested.
So the normally-added metabolism from an Activity-Factor won’t be there.
–Even Light regular activity will add 20% to your Metabolism.
What would you guess the likely % Calorie hit of doing Less of that or none at all?
and
4) Dr. Wright even says near the end that people eat more after bouts of sleep-dep and cites a few other studies,
That the hormones for BOTH Fullness and Appetite (leptin and ghrelin) go out of wack.
And they do so in favor of Feeling Less Full and Having a Bigger Appetite.
->SO: SUM(chronic recovery 1.days 2.hours, 3.lower metabolism, 4.lower activity, and 5.+6.:Cookie Monster crack-binge levels of 2 different chow-down hormones).=21
-BOOM! You’re fat!
Photo Credits:
“Lord”, by mrscenter
“Lazy Ollie”, by Boris Rio
Links:
• via: Wired
• More Coverage:
• UCB-Metabolic Cost of Human Sleep Deprivation Quantified by University of Colorado Team (note: this one had to be updated b/c UCB switched so text may not be ~exactly the same)
• AJCN-Acute partial sleep deprivation increases food intake in healthy men
• NBCI-Sleep loss reduces diurnal rhythm amplitude of leptin in healthy men
• NBCI-A single night of sleep deprivation increases ghrelin levels and feelings of hunger in normal-weight healthy men
• UCB-Dept of ChronoBio
• Source Study: JP-Energy expenditure during sleep, sleep deprivation and sleep following sleep deprivation in adult humans
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