Insomnia promotes weight gain

How is it that insomnia promotes weight gain? While there remains to be numerous reasons people gain weight, there is one that is collecting more evidence recently stating insomnia promotes weight gain. In the largest study of it’s kind to date, Namni Goel, PhD, of the Division of Sleep and Chronobiology at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, and colleagues enrolled 255 adults in a laboratory-controlled study to assess how sleep restriction affects weight. In short, insomnia promotes weight gain. On average, most patients are sleeping about 6.9 hours per night, and many people are sleeping less than six hours per night. This short sleep duration affects energy homeostasis and is a risk factor for a higher BMI.

Insomnia.. Is it treatable?

Yes! With recent studies indicating that insomnia promotes weight gain and can cause numerous other health issues, it is important that you get a good night sleep. There are many contributing factors that cause insomnia and your Primary Care Facility can help diagnose the real issue that prevents a good night sleep. From stress, to imbalances in your system, informing your Primary Care Facility of the issue can begin the process of diagnosing and treating insomnia so you can improve your sleep patterns.

Sleep researchers continue to learn more about how insomnia promotes weight gain but there already seems to be an obvious connection. 

Those who were sleep-restricted gained more weight than the control subjects, the researchers found. Calorie consumption did not vary significantly across protocol days in the control group; however, patients in the sleep-restricted group had a significant increase in caloric intake between baseline and sleep restricted days.

In other studies, insomnia has been linked with greater consumption of carbohydrates and fatty foods, as well as increased snacking and greater daily caloric intake. During this study, the sleep-restricted individuals tended to eat more calories from fat when up late compared to calories consumed during regular morning, afternoon and evening hours.

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