When you snooze, you don’t necessarily lose. A U of C study
released on Tuesday found that more sleep correlates to faster
metabolisms and that less sleep may even result in weight gains.
During the study, a group of seven subjects slept for 4.5 hours
while another slept for 8.5 hours for four consecutive nights.
One month later, the groups switched. After measuring the blood
and body fat of the two groups, researchers observed that those
who only got 4.5 hours of sleep had a 17 percent reduction in
insulin sensitivity compared to those who got the extra four
hours. “We had healthy, fit 20-year-old volunteers and turned
them into 40-year-olds metabolically,” said Matthew Brady
(A.B.’87, Ph.D.’94), the author of the study and Vice-Chair of
the Committee on Molecular Metabolism and Nutrition. Sleep
deprivation also decreased the amount of the hormone leptin in
the body, making subjects feel more hungry. While the study did
not examine why sleep deprived subjects displayed increased
insulin resistance, Brady hyp