If you had a choice between exercise and sleep for your health and waistline, hands down, sleep is the winner...here are the reasons why: ============================ Reason #1 ============================ Not getting enough sleep makes you RAVENOUSLY hungry and skyrockets your cravings...How? A study published in the Public Library of Science shows why. First, impaired sleep causes leptin, your Im full hormone to go DOWN. Second, it causes your Im hungry hormone to go UP. Not a good combo. ============================ Reason #2 ============================ Leptin, the “I’m full hormone, also controls your metabolism by influencing your thyroid hormone. So when you dont get enough shut-eye and leptin goes down, your thyroid also goes down, which causes your metabolic rate (how many calories you burn at rest) to absolutely PLUNGE! ============================ Reason #3 ============================ Sleep deprivation also depresses how sensitive your cells are to insulin. If you are LESS insulin sensitive, you need to crank out MORE insulin to clear any excess blood sugar that may be floating around. And more insulin causes a double fat-making whammy by telling your liver to turn the food you eat into fat AND by locking fat in your fat cells so it cant be released to be burned. Adding insult to injury, your body perceives lack of sleep to be a threat to its existence, so it fires up your stress hormone cortisol, which has been directly linked to excess belly fat. ============================ Reason #4 ============================ Impaired sleep also damages your brain, cognitive abilities and mood. Dr. Maiken Nedergaard, professor of neurosurgery at the University of Rochester, completed a study showing that when we sleep, our brain flushes out potent neurotoxins that are normal by-products of our waking activity. But if you let those by-products accumulate without taking out the garbage, VERY bad things happen -- like brain fog, impaired memory, wild mood swings and trouble focusing. Inflammation and oxidative stress also run rampant, causing even further damage to your brain and putting you at risk of developing age-related diseases such Alzheimers.
Posted on: Thu, 13 Mar 2014 15:53:57 +0000
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