News

12/05/2022

How much good quality sleep you get each night could impact your ability to not only lose weight but also maintain it, new research suggests. Studies have previously shown that a lack of quality sleep can increase people's desire for high calorie foods, including those that are loaded with carbohydrates. Now, new research reveals how a lack of quality sleep can also undermine people's attempts to maintain a healthy weight after dieting. For the study, researchers from the University of Copenhagen studied the quality and duration of sleep among 195 obese adults. They found that a low calorie diet can help aid better sleep, with sleep quality increasing by 0.8 global PSQI score points and sleep duration by 17 minutes per night after the initial 8-week period. Moreover, the researchers found that those who slept less than 6 hours a night, or had poor sleep quality, increased their BMI by 1.1 kg/m2. In comparison, obese adults who achieved over 6 hours of quality sleep each night reduced their BMI by 0.16 kg/m2. Dr. Signe Torekov, study lead author and a professor of clinical translation metabolism, said: “Adults who aren’t sleeping enough or getting poor quality sleep after weight loss appear less successful at maintaining weight loss than those with sufficient sleep.”

21/11/2019

Older women who sleep for 5 hours a night or less are more likely to have lower bone mineral density (BMD) and osteoporosis, a new study has found. Conducted by a team from the University at Buffalo, NY, the study involved 11,084 postmenopausal women, all of who were participants in the Women's Health Initiative. It found that poor sleep may negatively affect bone health. Specifically, the team found that compared with women who got more sleep, those who reported getting only up to 5 hours of sleep per night had significantly lower values in four measures of BMD: the whole body, the hip, the neck, and the spine. The lower BMD measures of the group getting less sleep were the equivalent of them being one year older than their peers in the more sleep group. Now one explanation for why these results were seen is due to how our bodies remove old bone tissue and replace it with new bone tissue, a process known as bone remodeling. “If you are sleeping less, one possible explanation is that bone remodeling isn't happening properly,” said lead study author Heather M. Ochs-Balcom, Ph.D., an associate professor of epidemiology and environmental health at the University at Buffalo School of Public Health and Health Professions. The full findings of the study are published in a paper in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research.

02/11/2017

The benefits of a full night’s sleep are well known. Insomniacs across the world will tell you what sleep deprivation can do to your mind and body. But now it seems that just a few nights of bad sleep could impact your mental health too. A team of scientists from the University of Oxford in the UK ran a small experiment using four volunteers who normally sleep just fine. The volunteers were fitted with monitors to track their sleep. For the first three nights of the study, they were allowed to sleep normally. For the next three nights, their sleep was restricted to just four hours per night. Each day of the study, the volunteers filled out questionnaires about how they were feeling and kept video diaries. Three out of the four volunteers said the experience was unpleasant, while one said he was largely unaffected. However, tests showed that his mood was significantly impacted, with positive emotions falling and negative emotions rising. Doctoral student Sarah Reeve, one of the scientists who ran the experiment, was surprised by how quickly the volunteers’ moods changed. "There were increases in anxiety, depression and stress, also increases in paranoia and feelings of mistrust about other people", she said. "Given that this happened after only three nights of sleep deprivation, that is pretty impressive."

17/04/2017

Toddlers who regularly use touchscreen devices, such as smartphones and tablets, don't sleep as well as their counterparts who don't, according to new research. The study in Scientific Reports shows that every hour a toddler spends playing with a touchscreen device each day shortens their sleep by almost 16 minutes. Conducted by Birkbeck, University of London and King’s College London, the study questioned 715 parents, with kids under three years old, about their children's touchscreen device usage and sleep patterns. It found that 75% of toddlers used a touchscreen device on a daily basis and slept for nearly 16 minutes less for every hour of use as a result. While the study isn't definitive, it does suggest that playing with touchscreen devices could be linked with possible sleep problems. However, the study also found that toddlers who play with smartphones and tablets have accelerated development of their fine motor skills. Speaking about the findings of the study, Dr Tim Smith, one of the researchers involved told the BBC: "It isn't a massive amount when you're sleeping 10-12 hours a day in total, but every minute matters in young development because of the benefits of sleep." His advice is not to ban toddlers from playing with touchscreen devices altogether, but to limit the amount of time they spend on them instead - the same as a lot of parents do with time spent in front of the TV.