Sleep Properly or Get Fat?

Sleep properly or gain weight?

Excessive obesity can lead not only to irreparable changes in the child’s body and loss of health for life, but also to serious psychological trauma that will be constantly inflicted on your child by those around him.

Fat-meat-processing plant - the classmates shouted after the overweight Igor. Igor was a very ordinary teenager, not an excellent student, but a confident good student, he knew how to imitate the voices of animals, he drew very well and simply loved to play football. But no one wanted to play on the same team with him - fat Igor ran slower than anyone in the class and never managed to run to the ball in time. During physical education classes, everyone came running to see how he would hang helplessly on the crossbar. And even the teachers, seeing him eating another donut during recess, made tactless comments to him: Igor, your jacket doesn’t fit on your stomach anymore. And the girls standing nearby laughed. Needless to say, none of them agreed to go to the cinema with him.

It is unlikely that, as parents, you want such a fate for your child. Excessive obesity can lead not only to irreparable changes in the child’s body and loss of health for life, but also to serious psychological trauma that will be constantly inflicted on your child by those around him. Sometimes they don’t even want to offend him at all: Look, if you open your mouth very wide on the street, you will swallow a balloon and become just like this boy.

Such injuries can be especially painful at the age when the child - already a teenager - begins to be interested in the opposite sex. Of course, he wants to be outwardly attractive, because at this age, it is known that people fall in love primarily with those who are beautiful, and not with those who have a deep inner world. In such a competitive struggle for recognition of their own attractiveness, a plump boy or a plump girl is most often doomed to lose. And, often, for the scenario of the rest of my life: I’m fat, I can’t be liked. To help their child not be a crumpet and a donut, parents should very closely monitor their child's lifestyle and, if necessary, help adjust the lifestyle.

A lot has been said about the need for proper nutrition to maintain optimal weight, and no less has been said about the importance of exercise and an active lifestyle. And relatively recently, data from American scientists from Stanford University and the University of Wisconsin* became known that sleep duration can directly affect metabolism and body weight. Scientists examined more than a thousand volunteers who slept from 4-5 to 8 hours daily for a long time. All volunteers kept diaries in which they recorded the duration of sleep, the entire daily routine, and also made a list of what they ate during the day - the subjects were not limited in food. In addition, the subjects underwent a range of medical tests every day. It turned out that the less the subjects slept, the more weight they gained. Those who slept 4-5 hours improved most noticeably. Those who slept 8 hours kept their weight unchanged.

Scientists have suggested that the culprit is two hormones involved in the regulation of appetite - leptin and ghrelin. Ghrelin increases the feeling of hunger (stimulates appetite), leptin suppresses it. In people who are constantly sleep deprived, the level of the hormone leptin in the blood decreases significantly. Since leptin is a hormone that is supposed to transmit a signal to the brain that a person is full and does not want to eat more, low leptin levels will contribute to increased hunger. As a result, a person begins to eat more than his body really needs for normal functioning. “Sorry, but I didn’t order this third dinner,” the stomach will be indignant, not being able to digest and assimilate the increased volume of food eaten. In a healthy body, the hormone leptin should come to its aid, giving a signal about