Even Your Fat Cells Need Sleep
New research suggests that sleep is even more important than we thought~ Not getting enough sleep can make you groggy, but can it also make you fat? Researchers at the University of Chicago think it's a strong possibility. In a new study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine , researchers determined that four nights of sleep deprivation reduced insulin sensitivity in fat cells by a whopping 30 percent. And the less sensitive your cells are to insulin, the less your body produces the hunger-regulating hormone leptin. "This is one of the first studies to show that a cell outside of the brain—the fat cell—also needs sleep," says study author Matthew Brady, Ph.D., vice-chair of the Committee on Molecular Metabolism and Nutrition at the University of Chicago. Brady and a team of researchers put seven young, healthy subjects through two study conditions: First, they spent 8.5 hours in bed for four nights in a row (participants slept for roughly 8 hours each night, the ...