Love the sweet? You just need to sleep!
Last reviewed: 15.08.2021
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Scientists are sure: to reduce the craving for sweets, you need to increase the duration of a night's sleep.
Specialists representing the Royal London School assure: people who sleep an adequate amount of time at night, eat less sweets in the afternoon. The researchers conducted an experiment involving volunteers. Participants were divided into two groups. The first group was given recommendations for improving the quality and duration of sleep: in particular, participants should not have to drink coffee in the afternoon, do not gorge at night and not starve. After this, the volunteers were released home, having previously installed a special apparatus on each of them, recording the quality and duration of sleep.
Perhaps everyone knows that the norm for a person to sleep is from seven to nine hours. But not everyone adheres to this rule, not the exception - and most of the participants in the experiment. Volunteers from the first group who received preliminary recommendations for improving sleep, slept more than other participants - about 50-90 minutes. As scientists discovered, not only the dream and its duration changed, but also the principles of nutrition. So, those people who slept in the recommended 7-9 hours interval, in most cases, refused sweets: their tea or coffee contained less sugar, they showed no weakness for sweet rolls and donuts.
Scientists have calculated that the normal duration of sleep reduced the daily habitual consumption of sugar by about 10 g.
Of course, for further clarification, a number of studies should be conducted, involving more people. However, even now we can draw some conclusions - for example, those of us who want to lose a few extra pounds, obviously will not leave this news without attention. It turns out that a full sleep at night contributes to the loss of excess weight.
The experiment conducted by scientists is not the first study, after which a correlation is found between the lack of night sleep and increased craving for weaknesses and other unhealthy foods. The same experts almost three years ago, the information of the following plan was made public: lack of sleep - especially systematic, - leads to frequent overeating. And scientific representatives of the University of Chicago in the publication of Sleep announced that one of the factors of malnutrition is the production of endocannabinoids, which increases in the period of lack of sleep and forces a person to consume more food, while paying less attention to its quality. Endocannabinoids "work" with pleasure signals and stimulate a person to create a constant level of satisfaction in the structures of the nervous system. Therefore, against a background of lack of sleep, people eat what they normally do not allow themselves - for various reasons.
If all the information obtained during the experiments is confirmed, then it will be much easier to fight obesity.
Details of the design work are published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.