Poor Sleep Can Make You Fat, May Lead to Heart Disease

There are hundreds of diet fads out there claiming to help you reduce wait. But it's not just food intake that affects weight loss, recent study suggests that poor or lack of sleep may lead to slow metabolism and is linked to getting fat and worse even obesity and cardiovascualr diseases.

A report said that in a study using 439,933 individuals suggests that there's a link between insufficient sleep and obesity.

The findings include that between the participants, the "morning" people eat better and healthier as compared to night owls. The study said "The new findings showed a stronger link between sleep and sedentary behavior than between sleep and physical activity, according to Freda Patterson, Assistant Professor at the Behavioral Health and Nutrition at University of Delaware

According to the study, even the active individuals who tend to get sedentary at night, instead of sleeping, were vulnerable to gaining weight. "We are starting to learn that even in people who are physically active and meet the physical activity recommendations, if they're highly sedentary, then they still have a fair bit of vulnerability to poor health."

Because of this, the next step to their study will be focused on improving sleep. They are yet to prove that sleeping can improve metabolism and alleviates the chance of obesity. Patterson was quoted saying "If we improve on sleep, can we improve subsequent health behaviors or not?"

But getting fat is not the only problem caused by poor sleeping habits. Other research said that not getting enough sleep affects the cholesterol level. Thus there's a link between heart diseases and lack of sleep.

A study from the University of Helsinki found out that poor sleep is related to the increases rates of cardiovascular diseases.

The European Society of Cardiology said ""Sleep disorders are very closely related to the presence of cardiovascular diseases. However, until now there has not been a population based cohort study examining the impact of sleep disorders on the development of a heart attack or stroke."

The same finding was reported recently. In an article published by the National Center for Biotechnology Information of the U.S. National Library of Medicine, they said that poor sleep or insufficient sleep can also lead to cardiometabolic diseases. "These findings suggest that prolonged sleep deprivation modifies inflammatory and cholesterol pathways at the level of gene expression and serum lipoproteins, inducing changes toward potentially higher risk for cardiometabolic diseases." The study suggested that sleep deprivation can lead to malfunction of cholesterol transporters leading to other diseases.

Poor sleep patterns worsen conditions with sedentary lifestyle and reverses the effect of healthy living despite having an active lifestyle. That's why experts suggests sufficient slumber every night is required to life a healthy life.