Sleep deprivation can lead to unhealthy eating-study

Tuesday 10th July 2012

According to latest research, a sleep deprived brain could cause you to eat junk food. Two different studies investigated the link between insufficient sleep and the ability to make healthy food choices. Both studies came to a conclusion, that sleep deprivation obstructs our ability to make smart choices about food. This is down to the how the brain functions in areas of impulse control and decision-making.

Research was carried out at University of California Berkley and they set out to investigate whether sleep would affect the different regions of the brain that manage and regulate our food choices. Part of the study included 23 adults that were given brain scans on two separate occasions. The first scan took place after a full night sleep and the second was after a night of less than enough sleep. During the MRI scans the participants were asked to rate their desire for 80 different food items.

The research found that activity in the brains frontal lobe was reduced after a poor night of sleep. This part of the brain is important for food related decisions as it manages impulse control, judgment, emotional responses and complex decision making. It was also found that there were no significant changes to the regions of the brain that control desire, which indicates lack of sleep, may be affecting our ability to make rational, healthy decisions about food rather than causing us to crave unhealthy food more when we’re tired.

The second study was carried out at New York's St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Centre and Columbia University and also used MRI scans to find out the effects of reduced sleep on regions of the brain that manage food choices. In this study 25 men and women were given brain scans after five nights with no more than four hours sleep per night. Similar to the first study they were also scanned the participants brains after five nights of normal sleep. During the scan they were also shown pictures of different foods.

The researchers found that when the participants had been deprived of sleep, exposure to images of unhealthy foods activated reward centres in the brain. This however didn't happen when the healthy food pictures were shown or when either pictures were shown when they had had a full nights sleep.

From the two studies it is now clearer smart food choices are compromised by the amount of sleep we receive at night. According to the studies it doesn't matter how much willpower someone has, because if someone hasn't received enough sleep our brain function alters.

Tags: sleep study deprivation

Category: Sleep Research

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