#15: Sleep & Weight Gain Part 1

If you limit people to just 6 hours of sleep a night or 5 hours of sleep or even 4 hours of sleep a night for several days or even several weeks, there is a common outcome: They will consistently eat more food relative to those same individuals when they're getting a full night of sleep.

Levels of the hunger hormone, which is ghrelin, will rocket up when you're not getting sufficient sleep; they will increase by up to 28%.

In fact, there is a 20% increase in those endocannabinoids within individuals who are not getting sufficient sleep. And just as we expected, as a result of that increase in those cannabinoids, their hunger levels increased by over 30%.

If I take a group of perfectly healthy adults who are actually not cannabis users and I limit them to, let's say, 4 or 5 hours of sleep a night for several nights, something remarkable happens: We see a sharp increase in the production and the release of those natural endocannabinoids.

Keep in mind that human beings are the only species that will deliberately deprive themselves of sleep for no apparent, meaningful, biological reason.