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Speaker 1: From housetop works dot Com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Kristen and I'm Molly. Molly. How are you feeling today?
Speaker 1: We're recording on Monday. Are you well rested from the weekend?
Speaker 1: You know, I'm I'm I could probably have a few
Speaker 1: more hours to sleep in me. I tend to get
Speaker 1: a little off off my schedule on the weekends. Do
Speaker 1: you think you sleep more or just just at different times.
Speaker 1: I think so that you know, by Sunday night, I'm
Speaker 1: not quite ready to go to bed at my normal time.
Speaker 1: I hear you. I had similar problem last night, and
Speaker 1: that's why on my way home from work today, I
Speaker 1: am going to pick up a sleep mass fancy I
Speaker 1: decided to do it. I just I wake up too
Speaker 1: many times in the middle of the night, and um,
Speaker 1: I just I need I need a full eight hours
Speaker 1: of sleep uninterrupted. It's affecting your health. I just feel
Speaker 1: sluggish during the day. You know. Mom always told me
Speaker 1: to get my get my beauty sleep. I don't like
Speaker 1: waking up and having, you know, puffy eyes. And I've
Speaker 1: noticed that there's a week when I don't get enough sleep.
Speaker 1: My skin's not as good, I don't have as much focus.
Speaker 1: So I think that it definitely affects me. Well, Kristen,
Speaker 1: can I ask you something of a personal question? Sure?
Speaker 1: Do you find that those weeks so when you don't
Speaker 1: get enough sleep, you might feel a little chubbier, might
Speaker 1: gain a pound or two. I think I eat worse
Speaker 1: than I normally would if there's a week when I'm
Speaker 1: not uh, when I'm not sleeping as much, because I'm
Speaker 1: probably just eating out of stress. Well, there actually it
Speaker 1: might be a link between a bad night's sleep and
Speaker 1: wake gain. That's right. There's been a lot of research
Speaker 1: recently linking obesity and lack of sleep. And there was
Speaker 1: a study of nine thousand people between nine two and
Speaker 1: nine eight four that found that people who average six
Speaker 1: hours of sleep per night or and more likely to
Speaker 1: be overweight than people who got seven to nine hours
Speaker 1: of sleep and okay, more likely. That's that's pretty big.
Speaker 1: But Molly checked this out. People in the same study
Speaker 1: who are only sleeping five hours a night or more
Speaker 1: likely to be overweight. I know that's pretty pretty frightening
Speaker 1: because I think there are definitely a few nights where
Speaker 1: I clock in at five hours, and sometimes you try
Speaker 1: and say, oh, I only need six hours. I'm really
Speaker 1: more of a ten hour sleeper. But there's really not
Speaker 1: as much um leeway as we might think. Basically, researchers
Speaker 1: are saying that you need seven hours as a minimum,
Speaker 1: except you know, for babies and the elderly, right seven
Speaker 1: to nine hours of sleep. And I know that it's
Speaker 1: a rare week when I when I hit that number
Speaker 1: every single night. Well, you might be hitting new numbers
Speaker 1: on the scale if you don't start hitting your sleep number.
Speaker 1: And let me tell you why what Because it misses
Speaker 1: with your hormone. Of course, I'll goes back to hormones.
Speaker 1: All goes back to hormones, but in this case, these
Speaker 1: are hormones that affect both males and females. The hormones
Speaker 1: we're talking about are called lepton and greenland, and leptin
Speaker 1: is the hormone that triggers our body to turn off
Speaker 1: our appetites. Let's if we're eating a big meal. Um,
Speaker 1: it kicks in once our stomachs are full and we
Speaker 1: need to put our fork down. So when we go
Speaker 1: to sleep, it's really convenient that ore leptin levels rise
Speaker 1: so that we don't wake up in the middle of
Speaker 1: the night starving. Exactly. So if you've have like a
Speaker 1: late night and you end up at a place like
Speaker 1: waffle House or I hop in, might because you're not asleeping,
Speaker 1: don't have enough lectin to shut that off. So basically,
Speaker 1: when you're sleep deprived, you have two little lepton So
Speaker 1: basically your brain is never getting the message that you're full.
Speaker 1: You don't have any energy, so you just keep eating
Speaker 1: and eating and eating mindless snacking, mindless snacking. And then
Speaker 1: at the same time, there's another hormone related to eating
Speaker 1: called greenland, and this is basically the hunger hormone. This
Speaker 1: signals your body that you need to eat more food
Speaker 1: because you don't have enough energy to fulfill your your
Speaker 1: physical needs, right, and so when you're sleep deprived, you
Speaker 1: have too much of this. So basically left in and greenland,
Speaker 1: when they're working right, are sort of like the checks
Speaker 1: and balances system from your appetite. Exactly, one is telling
Speaker 1: you that you're fall and then one will kick start
Speaker 1: and be like, oh, you know what we need to
Speaker 1: do soon, right, so if you're not getting enough sleep,
Speaker 1: that means that your greenland levels are going to be higher,
Speaker 1: which means you're going to be abnormally hungry. And not
Speaker 1: only that, it triggers your body to sore. Energy is
Speaker 1: fat instead of burning it. And you know Kristen, sleep
Speaker 1: deprivation has also been found to increase levels of certain
Speaker 1: stress hormones and it might create insolent resistance in people, right,
Speaker 1: and that could lead to weight weighting and also type
Speaker 1: two diabetes. Now, the reason why this is a particular
Speaker 1: problem for women is because women statistically are twice as
Speaker 1: likely to report sleep problems as men. Insomnia is the
Speaker 1: number one sleep problem that that women experience, according to
Speaker 1: the National Sleep Foundation UM and while sixty of women
Speaker 1: report insomnia, only of men do the same thing. Right,
Speaker 1: And the same study from the National Sleep Foundation, more
Speaker 1: than half of American women say they get a good
Speaker 1: night's sleep only a few nights per week. So I
Speaker 1: mean that's half the week where you might be at
Speaker 1: risk for these higher higher levels of lepton and lower
Speaker 1: levels of greenland. And one thing that I found most
Speaker 1: interesting about these statistics dealing with with specifically with women
Speaker 1: who have sleep problems was the number one category of
Speaker 1: women who were having trouble sleeping or stay at home moms. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty interesting. So this Christian leads me to ask,
Speaker 1: is sleep the new diet? Do you have to exercise?
Speaker 1: Do you have to eat right? Can you just sleep
Speaker 1: more and keep your appetite and check? I don't think
Speaker 1: that we can ever deny Molly that healthy diet and
Speaker 1: exercise is going to be important for being healthy. But
Speaker 1: a number of studies have also found that, um, if
Speaker 1: you aren't sleeping enough at the same time, the health
Speaker 1: benefits of exercise and good proper eating are basically going
Speaker 1: to cancel each other out. For instance, there was a
Speaker 1: recent study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of
Speaker 1: Science that found that slim, healthy adults whom were deprived
Speaker 1: of slow wave sleep for only three nights built up
Speaker 1: the same level of insulin resistance as someone who gained
Speaker 1: twenty to thirty pounds. So it seems pretty apparent to
Speaker 1: me that we need to focus a lot on how
Speaker 1: much sleep we're getting. Well Kristen to play Devil's advocate,
Speaker 1: I have found some research that says it might be
Speaker 1: um a little the connection might be a little bit
Speaker 1: more tenuous than all this previous research is shown, because
Speaker 1: remember how you're talking how you wake up a lot
Speaker 1: in the night. It turns out it's a lot about
Speaker 1: the quality of sleep you're getting. So when people started
Speaker 1: figuring out that there was a connection between sleep and obesity,
Speaker 1: they started to look at sleep problems people had, and
Speaker 1: a lot of people have sleep apnea, which is when
Speaker 1: they stop breathing while they sleep, and that's can happen
Speaker 1: like hundreds of times and night, which means that if
Speaker 1: you're getting eight hours of sleep, it only feels like
Speaker 1: four because you can't get into the deep levels of sleep,
Speaker 1: so you're still experiencing that slow wave sleep deprivation that
Speaker 1: that was reflected in that study that I just talked about,
Speaker 1: probably exactly. But do you know what they found in
Speaker 1: terms of leptin and those people. You know how we
Speaker 1: were talking about how most people who are superprived to
Speaker 1: have two little leftin right and lefton is the appetite
Speaker 1: suppressing hormone, right, But people who have sleep apne i
Speaker 1: have really high levels of leptin, which was really contrary
Speaker 1: to what they thought they were going to find. So
Speaker 1: what does that mean. It means that leptin maybe more
Speaker 1: of an individual saying than than than we might be thinking.
Speaker 1: It can't be just you know, a one size fits
Speaker 1: all left in uh solution. Okay, well, um, I will
Speaker 1: back that up with UM studies that have also exploring
Speaker 1: kind of the gender differences in sleep, looking at why
Speaker 1: women have more sleep problems than men. In addition to
Speaker 1: we've got these different levels of lefton and greenland hormones,
Speaker 1: but also UM scientists think that it might be related
Speaker 1: to levels of trip to fans there atnin and melotonin
Speaker 1: um in women and men that could be leading women
Speaker 1: to to not have his RESTful sleep. Oh, Kristen, why
Speaker 1: does it always come back to hormones? Always hormones? So
Speaker 1: I think what we're dealing here with, Kristen, is a
Speaker 1: lot of interesting studies that show us that there's this
Speaker 1: connection between sleep and OBC and it couldn't hurt to
Speaker 1: get more sleep, right, But we also can't give up
Speaker 1: yet our gym memberships or our diet exactly. So that
Speaker 1: leads us to, Molly, how do we get more sleep?
Speaker 1: How when I turn my light out and put my
Speaker 1: new sleep mask on, how am I not going to
Speaker 1: wake up? Like eight times in the middle of the night.
Speaker 1: Do you exercise before you go to sleep. I am
Speaker 1: a night exerciser. I trying to exercise in the morning
Speaker 1: and I cannot do it. We'll just make sure you
Speaker 1: finish that work up work out before about three hours
Speaker 1: afore that time. Well, one thing that I've also been
Speaker 1: trying to do that's supposed to help with sleeping is
Speaker 1: not spending as much time in bed before I'm actually
Speaker 1: ready to go to sleep, because I like to just
Speaker 1: lounge around read some for like an hour or so
Speaker 1: before going to bed, and supposedly that it is actually
Speaker 1: making it harder for me to go to sleep. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I hear. You've got to like build this relationship with
Speaker 1: your bed where sleep is only gonna happens in. And
Speaker 1: the good news is that for normal people who are
Speaker 1: getting the right amount of sleep, it takes about fifteen
Speaker 1: minutes to actually fall asleep. So if you're if you're
Speaker 1: hitting the pillow and you're not immediately nodding off, that's
Speaker 1: actually a good sign, right, But if it takes you
Speaker 1: more than say half an hour or an hour to
Speaker 1: fall asleep, you need to get up and do something.
Speaker 1: If you keep tossing and turning in bed. It's actually
Speaker 1: going to kind of create a negative relationship with your
Speaker 1: bed and build up anxiety around falling asleep. So it's
Speaker 1: going to create a negative feedback cycle and you're really
Speaker 1: not going to be able to have a RESTful night's sleep.
Speaker 1: So Molly, what I recommend if you are a restless
Speaker 1: sleeper you need to get up and and and do
Speaker 1: some things before you fall asleep. You could just go
Speaker 1: go out your laptop, put your PC and just go
Speaker 1: to how stuff works dot com and read read some
Speaker 1: more articles about sleep and hunger and obesity and anything
Speaker 1: else that might satisfy your needs. So there's our advice
Speaker 1: from Dr Kristen. Head on over to how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
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