How important is sleep?

Sleep is extremely essential, and it should be considered equally important as nutrition and exercise. Many biological functions are supported by good sleep habits, whereas inadequate sleep can cause many systems to be suboptimal or even malfunction.

Fat Mass and Obesity

Research in Epidemiology (Survey)

A number of research have looked at the relationship (degree of connection) between body fat and sleep. Over a 5-year period, there appears to be an inverse link (less sleep nightly being related with more body fat), which is further connected with greater fat mass increase.

After adjusting for demographic, lifestyle, job, and health-related characteristics, this connection appears to continue after removing probable confounding factors.

Sleep Deprivation

It indicates that reducing sleep by 3 hours (8.5 to 5.5) under purposeful calorie restriction (fat loss diets) is linked with an adverse nutritional partitioning impact, causing more weight loss to originate from lean mass rather than fat mass as compared to a rested control.

Sleep deprivation tends to increase hunger, at least in the short term, and this effect may be amplified when sleep deficit is combined with a lower calorie intake. This has been estimated to be about a 20% increase in voluntary calorie consumption in otherwise healthy women (and a slight increase in body weight of 0.4kg over 4 days).

Cognitive Output

Sleep deprivation causes a neural sleep wave pattern that has been linked to sadness, and well-being appears to be linked to sleep as well. Higher levels of cognition, such as problem solving, are harmed by a lack of sleep.