So I'm reading pages and pages of research articles that have been done in the realm of sleep, sleep deprivation, and ghrelin. Ghrelin is a hormone secreted by your stomach that lets your body know that it needs to eat something. Ghrelin is complimented by Leptin which tells your body you are satisfied. Okay, so what have I found so far. Well, we need approximately 7 hours of sleep each night. No kidding, right? Getting more sleep than that and you are at risk for being overweight/obese. Getting less than that... same problem. But it's not just a matter of crawling into bed 7 hours before you need to wake up in the morning. You also need to be getting quality sleep. Quality sleep means you drift frequently from the lighter stages of sleep (stage 1 and 2) to the deepest stage of sleep (REM - rapid eye movement). How can you tell if you're doing this? Well, I found an application for my smart phone that senses it if you really want to test yourself. Or if you share your bed with a very light sleeper you could ask them if you toss and turn a lot. Movement during sleep (unless you have a sleep disorder) indicates you are in the upper levels of sleep, whereas sleep paralysis happens in REM sleep (thus you move about as much as a big rock). Okay, so if you are getting 7 hours of quality sleep, with nice sleep waves, then you are setting yourself up for a good day with normal levels of ghrelin. What happens if you aren't getting a good night's sleep? Well, first thing in the morning your ghrelin levels will be depressed. So the lower the ghrelin levels are, the less internal encouragement you have to eat. Which sounds great... however, mid-afternoon into the early evening these ghrelin levels will spike up. A low ghrelin in the morning lends itself to a high level at the time of day when we have the hardest time denying our cravings.
Oh, but it gets better. Okay, so let's say you are doing a great job getting plenty of rest at night. This generally means that you would be on track for a great day with ghrelin showing up at meal times letting you know you're hungry but not encouraging you to overdo it. For this next scenario, we are going to assume that you have started a diet and exercise program so you can shed a few extra pounds. You've lost a little and are feeling good. Now Mr. Homeostasis seems to want to add in his opinion. Homeostatis is the body's natural way of trying to "maintain". It doesn't like change and it wants things to stay just as they are. In order for this guy to maintain your weight, he kicks in ghrelin as a last ditch effort to make you put that weight back on. Ghrelin tells you that you are ravenously hungry and need to eat eat eat!!! Everytime I think about this, all I can say is "where the heck was homestasis when I was putting the weight on????" and why didn't he want me to stay lean? No use thinking about it now. Just need to remember this information when you are starting to lose some weight and want your efforts to continue. I think if you're anticipating that little push of hunger (from ghrelin) then you can be better prepared to handle it, instead of throwing in the towel and hitting up that bag of Halloween candy.
Coming soon, I will fill you in on the dirty little secret of gender differences in weight gain in regards to ghrelin. Dumb female body!!! For now, just "digest" the sleep and ghrelin tid bit. It's exhausting to think about it. Almost makes me want to take a nap (but don't since it doesn't count towards your 7 hours at night).
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