Training

How sleep controls your appetite (and influences your running)

July 20, 2009
By Alex Hutchinson

Very interesting article by Jackie Dikos in Running Times about the relationship between sleep and appetite:

There are two hormones associated with sleep that influence eating behaviors: ghrelin and leptin. Ghrelin is the hormone that lets your body know you’re hungry. Leptin’s role is to send a message to stop eating when your body has had enough. When you’re sleep-deprived, your ghrelin level increases. At the same time leptin levels decrease. So you crave additional food while simultaneously not getting the proper message to stop eating.

Seems like a pretty straightforward connection, and explains the well-documented links between getting too little sleep and gaining weight. I’ve posted before about how sleep aids athletic performance, and it’s worth adding Dikos’s conclusion:

Sleep is another way to nourish your body, just like a high-quality food choice is.