A man on our road emerged at the start of January to pound the pavements in a stylish new tracksuit. He was overweight but at least he managed to look elegant as he cantered along the nearby canal. Then his resolution faltered, and given the unpleasant weather we had at the time, who can blame him?
On a recent morning I spotted him making his way to the local shop wearing pyjamas under his overcoat. He was still overweight.
A sad business, I thought until it struck me that he may have been reading the same research on sleep and weight that I had been reading. If so, swapping the tracksuit for the pyjamas may have been a well thought-out strategy.
Research, including a survey of 65,000 Europeans in 2012, shows that people who get too little sleep eat more calories than those who get enough, with the natural result that they put on weight.
Many studies around the world have confirmed that finding. One found that people who slept for less than six hours per night were significantly more likely to be obese or overweight.
Yet another showed that adults allowed to sleep for a maximum of 5.5 hours per night for a fortnight ate more snacks than others who slept for 8.5 hours every night.
Note what this means: if you’re overweight, you might need to spend more, not less, time in bed.
This idea doesn’t come naturally. I think we tend to take a punitive attitude towards ourselves and our poor bodies when we get unfit. Exercise becomes the answer, not only for weight loss but as a form of moral hygiene.
Eight hours' sleep
The body, seen as a sluggish, even sinful, animal, must be chastised as well as renovated. And yet if you are getting too little sleep and are overweight, getting your sleep up to eight hours a night may be just as good as pushing yourself along pavements and around parks.
Aside from the question of weight, sleep deprivation is a serious issue. Drivers fall asleep at the wheel and sometimes die as a result. People deprived of sleep have a heightened sensitivity to pain – a vicious circle if it is the pain that is depriving them of sleep.
Sleep deprivation makes people more pessimistic and less sociable.
Lack of sleep may also compromise the immune system. A study at the University of California found that healthy adults who were given hepatitis B vaccinations had a poorer immune response if they had been deprived of sleep.
One study found that sleep-loss due to work problems can increase the risk of heart disease. Specifically, people working for bosses who were unsympathetic to their work versus family problems displayed more risk factors for heart disease than those with sympathetic bosses.
People with severe sleep disorders such as sleep apnoea also have a higher risk of cancer. According to a study in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine , death from cancer is five times more common in people with severe sleep-disordered breathing conditions.
At a time when worry about obesity in teenagers and children is growing, it’s worth noting that the link between sleep deprivation and over-eating is strongest in these age groups. Yet teenagers, in particular, get little sympathy if they are perceived as sleeping too much.
Many of us are in the habit of pushing forward into the day without enough sleep and I have to confess that I am frequently guilty of this bad behaviour. For some, the whole concept of eight hours’ sleep is like something from a different world.
But if we take these findings seriously, then these are the attitudes we need to change.Those lost hours of sleeping time could be taking your life, hour by hour. As the research continues to show, sleep deprivation is a silent killer.
To read more about this fascinating subject, see Dr Siri Carpenter's article 'Awakening to sleep' in the American Psychological Association Monitor
at iti.ms/1mzaMHm
pomorain@yahoo.com
Padraig O'Morain
is a counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.