Hi there, it's Matt Walker here and welcome back to the podcast. Today is going to be the first of a two-part episode, series all about sleep eating and body
weight. So let's just get right into it. You've probably noticed a desire to eat more when you're not getting sufficient sleep, and this is not a coincidence.
Some rather fiendish changes will unfold within both your brain and your body when sleep get short and it will lead to a path of potential overeating. And as a consequence weight gain, the first issue concerns to appetite regulating hormones called leptin and ghrelin. Now, I often joke. They actually sound to me more like two Hobbits from Lord of the Rings, but
I promise you. They are actually real hormones. Leptin will send a satiety signal to your brain, which in other words, in, plain speak means that it sends a signal of fullness. So when leptin levels are high, your appetite is reduced. And as a result, you feel satisfied by the food that you've eaten growl in, in contrast does the exact opposite?
Ellen, will rev up your hunger. And so when ghrelin levels are high, you don't feel satisfied by the food that you just ate. And as a result, you'll want to eat more and sadly. These two hormones, go in opposite directions when you're not getting sufficient sleep. So if we limit people healthy individuals to let's say four or five hours of sleep, a night for a few nights. What happens first. We see a marked.
Reduction in leptin. Leptin levels will drop by about 18% and leptin as you will remember, tells your brain that you are satiated. But when you're not getting sufficient sleep, you're going to lose that Sensation that feeling that signal of being Satisfied by your food. And if that weren't bad, enough levels of The Hunger hormone, which is ghrelin will rock it up, when you're not getting sufficient sleep, they will
Reese by up to 28 percent, so in other words, you will lose the signal of fullness and you increase the volume on your hunger. And in some ways to me. This is physiological Double Jeopardy, you're getting punished twice for the same offense of not getting enough sleep. Once by the loss of the I'm full. I don't want to eat anymore signal, which is leptin, which decreases and once by the
I'm still hungry. I want to eat more signal of ghrelin, which is increasing when you're not getting sufficient sleep. So that's leptin and ghrelin. But recently we've discovered that there is another chemical change, triggered by a lack of sleep, and it will also ramp up your hunger and you're eating. So you probably know that when or sorry, I should probably not make assumptions of my audience. Let me rephrase.
Is that you may have heard that cannabis gives you the munchies. In other words, it makes you feel hungry and we will come right back to this issue of cannabis and its relationship with sleep in just a
second the partners supporting. Today's episode
is athletic greens. Now as you may or perhaps you may not know athletic greens is a
Nutrition drink, which combines a full complement of antioxidants and minerals biotics together with essential vitamins. I'll refrain from reading the full list of content, which would probably take at least another half an hour, but you get the idea. It's very comprehensive. And I've been using it for two reasons, and I've been using it for a bunch of years. Now, first. I'm pretty serious about my health and I always try to have a full
All Nutritional Health insurance coverage policy and that's one of the reasons I take it. The second is that I did my research on the science and the ingredients in athletic greens, because I think it's science and scientific data that I at least take as ground truth. So if any of this sounds like something that you want to explore, you can go on over to athletic greens.com forward slash Matt Walker and you'll get three.
Benefits. The first you'll get money off your initial order s, if you use that link athletic greens.com forward slash Matt Walker, they will give listeners of this podcast, a one-year free supply of vitamin D with your first order. And finally, with that first order, you will get five free travel packs if you use that link, okay. Thank you so much for listening to the segment. It really does as you can imagine.
It really does help the podcast. So thanks for supporting it in that way. And let's get back to the
podcast.
So cannabis, it's not a
myth that it will give you the munchies. In fact, there is really good scientific data that the cannabinoids of which THC is one and THC. Tetrahydrocannabinol is the psychoactive component of cannabis. It's the thing that gets you high, those cannabinoids including THC, will robustly increase your appetite levels. They will increase your hunger. What you may?
Not know. However, is that you produce your own natural cannabinoids? And these are what we call, the endocannabinoids meaning that they come from inside of you, rather than taking something into your body from the outside, such as eating, or smoking, or dosing with cannabis. Now, if I take a group of perfectly healthy adults, who are actually not cannabis users and I limit them to let's say,
A four or five 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. 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 the hunger levels.
Increased by over 30%. Now at this point you may be thinking look that's all fine and good to hear about these chemical changes and these changes in hunger, but does that actually mean that I'm going to end up eating more? Sadly? It does, if you limit people to just six hours of sleep, a night or five hours of sleep reason, for 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 and it's not a small amount either. It's usually somewhere between 300 to 400 extra calories of food each and every day that they will consume in addition snacking also becomes a problem. Now, if you feed people a large meal of over 1,000 calories and then
After that meal, you do something a little bit dastardly, you then give them the option to go to a finger Buffet filled with all sorts of different snacks. What we found is that underslept individuals will continue to snack. And in fact, they will consume an additional 200 to 300 calories of snack foods after that large meal serving relative to participants who've been getting a full eight hours of sleep.
T. Now it's hand waving to a degree but you can calculate those numbers for a typical underslept individual. Even one who is let's say just under sleeping during the five days of the working week what that amounts to is somewhere in the region of 6,000, extra calories every month. So again, it's not a small amount. If you think about it across the lifespan of short sleep. Let's take a step back.
For a second and let's ask a more fundamental question. Why on Earth does any of this happen? Why does your hunger and your desire to eat? Go into overdrive when you are under? Slept does any of that make sense? Well, from an evolutionary perspective. Yes. We actually think it does make sense. Keep in mind that human beings are the only species that will deliberately deployed.
I've themselves of sleep for no apparent, meaningful, biological reason. Now, it's not to say that animals. Don't undergo insufficient sleep, occasionally and under very extreme circumstances. They will Express a reduction in the amount of sleep that they get. And one of those times is when an animal is placed under conditions of severe starvation, and it's rather simple, the brain decides that it has to keep the animal awake.
Cake for a little bit longer and therefore sleep a little bit less. So the animal can forage for food in a larger perimeter than is normal. And therefore try to solve the situation of starvation, which is to say that when we are not getting sufficient sleep, when we don't give our brain enough sleep from an evolutionary perspective. The brain thinks that we may be in a state of starvation and therefore food, desire and food craving.
Increases, so that's one of in fact, I think, several plausible theories that we have explaining these changes in both your appetite regulating hormones as well as what you want to eat. However, this is not the end of our story when it comes to sleep, loss and weight gain, it's not simply the fact that you want to eat more when you're not getting sufficient sleep. It's also about a change in what it is that you want to.
eat. In other words, your food preferences will start to shift. And in addition how your body will then deposit those calories as either fat or muscle will also change as a consequence of insufficient sleep. That will be the focus of our second podcast in this series, on sleep and weight gain, but for now, I will simply say, thank you so much for listening and thank you to
B1 for subscribing. Again, do not feel any need to go and rate the podcast or review the podcast. It's great if you're moved to do so, but I just want you to enjoy listening and then hopefully they're after sleeping a substantial amount. So I will leave you to go and do the latter and I will see you in the next episode. Thanks so much again, and take care for now.
