睡眠不足还能导致发胖?
Sleeping badly or working night shifts could be making you fat, weak and more likely to become diabetic. A study has revealed short or restless slumber changes the way people's DNA works and makes the body more dedicated to storing fat. Muscles get smaller and fat stores begin to rise when people lose as little as one night's sleep, the experts found. Although midnight snacks or being too tired to exercise could be blamed for tired people getting fatter, there may now be a more scientific reason. Researchers have linked losing sleep to weight gain in the past but have found it difficult to explain – now they reveal it could be linked to the body clock. And a tired body also becomes less able to handle sugar in the blood which raises the risk of someone developing type 2 diabetes. Sleep researchers from Uppsala University in Sweden did a study on 15 people who they tested after a full night's sleep and after a sleepless night. They took fat and muscle tissue samples and collected blood from the healthy weight participants and found the way their DNA works had changed. The researchers say their findings are important because high levels of body fat increase the risk of the world's biggest causes of death: cancer, heart disease and stroke. People's sensitivity to blood sugar is also dampened when they're tired, the study found, which suggests those who don't sleep well are at higher risk of type 2 diabetes. 'We saw that the [fatty] tissue is attempting to increase its capacity to store fat following sleep loss,' said Dr Cedernaes,'Whereas we observed signs of breakdown of skeletal muscle.We also noted changes in levels of proteins involved handling blood glucose, and this could help explain why the participants' glucose sensitivity was impaired following sleep loss.' 'Taken together, these observations may provide at least partial insight as to why chronic sleep loss and shift work can increase the risk of adverse weight gain as well as the risk of type 2 diabetes.' The findings were published in the journal Science Advances. |