An extra hour between the sheets at night might be the key to shedding excess weight and fighting obesity, according to recent research.
“More sleep could be the ideal way of stabilizing weight or slimming,” said neuroscientist Karine Spiegel, of France’s INSERM, a public organization dedicated to biological, medical and public health research.
Although poor eating habits and lack of exercise clearly play a role in the global rise of obesity, recent data indicates that lack of sleep may also be a factor, and one that is often underestimated.
Around 30 surveys carried out on wide population samples in seven countries have underlined a link between lack of sleep and excess weight or obesity in both children and adults, Spiegel said.
The first of the studies, carried out in 1992 in France, highlighted the problem in children and teenagers. Spiegel said the increase in obesity in the US in the second half of the 20th century corresponded with a mounting decrease in sleep.
Two key hormones produced at night which help regulate appetite were at play, she said.
Grehlin makes people hungry, slows metabolism and decreases the body’s ability to burn body fat, and leptin, a protein hormone produced by fatty tissue, regulates fat storage.
“We have shown that less sleep (two four-hour nights) caused an 18 percent loss of appetite-cutting leptin and a 28 percent increase of appetite-causing grehlin,” she said.
Such hormonal changes made people hungry for foods heavy in fats and sugars such as chips, biscuits, cakes and peanuts, she added.
The sleep loss caused a 23 percent to 24 percent increase in hunger, Spiegel said, translating into an extra 350 kilocalories to 500 kilocalories a day, “which for a young sedentary adult of normal weight could lead to a major amount of added weight.”
It was unclear whether several years of sleep deprivation could lastingly harm the body’s ability to restore a balance between the two hormones.
A study released in Washington, DC, in February showed children lacking shut-eye faced a greater risk of becoming obese than kids who got a good night’s sleep.
Each extra hour of sleep cuts a child’s risk of becoming overweight or obese by nine percent, according to an analysis of epidemiological studies by researchers from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
By contrast, children who got the least sleep had a 92 percent higher chance of being overweight or obese than children who slept enough, said the study published in the journal Obesity.
“Our analysis of the data shows a clear association between sleep duration and the risk for overweight or obesity in children. The risk declined with more sleep,” said Youfa Wang, a senior author of the study.
“Desirable sleep behavior may be an important low-cost means for preventing childhood obesity and should be considered in future intervention studies,” Wang said in a news release.
The researchers reviewed 17 published studies on sleep duration and childhood obesity.
Some research recommends that children under 5 years old sleep 11 hours or more a day, while children age 5 to 10 should get 10 or more hours of sleep, and children older than 10 should sleep at least nine hours.
In the March 9 edition of the Taipei Times a piece by Ninon Godefroy ran with the headine “The quiet, gentle rhythm of Taiwan.” It started with the line “Taiwan is a small, humble place. There is no Eiffel Tower, no pyramids — no singular attraction that draws the world’s attention.” I laughed out loud at that. This was out of no disrespect for the author or the piece, which made some interesting analogies and good points about how both Din Tai Fung’s and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) meticulous attention to detail and quality are not quite up to
April 21 to April 27 Hsieh Er’s (謝娥) political fortunes were rising fast after she got out of jail and joined the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in December 1945. Not only did she hold key positions in various committees, she was elected the only woman on the Taipei City Council and headed to Nanjing in 1946 as the sole Taiwanese female representative to the National Constituent Assembly. With the support of first lady Soong May-ling (宋美齡), she started the Taipei Women’s Association and Taiwan Provincial Women’s Association, where she
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) hatched a bold plan to charge forward and seize the initiative when he held a protest in front of the Taipei City Prosecutors’ Office. Though risky, because illegal, its success would help tackle at least six problems facing both himself and the KMT. What he did not see coming was Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (將萬安) tripping him up out of the gate. In spite of Chu being the most consequential and successful KMT chairman since the early 2010s — arguably saving the party from financial ruin and restoring its electoral viability —
It is one of the more remarkable facts of Taiwan history that it was never occupied or claimed by any of the numerous kingdoms of southern China — Han or otherwise — that lay just across the water from it. None of their brilliant ministers ever discovered that Taiwan was a “core interest” of the state whose annexation was “inevitable.” As Paul Kua notes in an excellent monograph laying out how the Portuguese gave Taiwan the name “Formosa,” the first Europeans to express an interest in occupying Taiwan were the Spanish. Tonio Andrade in his seminal work, How Taiwan Became Chinese,