Don’t lose sleep if losing weight

If you’re using running to try and lose some weight and get in shape, don’t lose sleep over it.

New research presented last week adds to a growing body of work suggesting losing sleep can negate some of the gains made in trying to lose weight. Multiple recent studies have found that lost sleep can have negative effects on metabolism.

The most recent study, presented last Thursday, had 522 people who had been recently diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes divided into three groups: usual care, physical activity, or diet and physical activity. They also all kept notes on how much they slept.

“While previous studies have shown that short sleep duration is associated with obesity and diabetes, we found that as little as 30 minutes a day sleep debt can have significant effects on obesity and insulin resistance at follow up,” said lead author Shahrad Taheri in a press release.

“Sleep loss is widespread in modern society, but only in the last decade have we realized its metabolic consequences,” said Taheri. “Our findings suggest that avoiding sleep debt could have positive benefits for waistlines and metabolism and that incorporating sleep into lifestyle interventions for weight loss and diabetes might improve their success.”

What was found was that even at small amounts of sleep debt, chances of patients being obese was much higher. Compared with those who had no sleep debt, those who did were 72 per cent more likely to be overweight.