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Burn Fat in Your Sleep, Start Tonight
One simple intervention at home can improve your metabolism while you sleep, and the positive benefits don’t end there.
The quality of our sleep is declining, which is a disaster for our health. As we toss and turn our nights away, we conjure more symptoms that force us into a vicious circle of poor sleep, metabolic dysfunction and weight gain. But, there is a way we can help break out of this destructive cycle and create one that, rather than worsens dysfunction and disease, feeds back into health. The good news is, it’s simple, and you can start tonight.
“a single poor nights sleep makes people more insulin resistant — a mechanism behind metabolic and cardiovascular disease.”
The Vicious Circle
Scientists demonstrated a decade ago that a single poor nights sleep makes people more insulin resistant—a mechanism behind metabolic and cardiovascular disease. Since then, more robust research has been added to the pile confirming a restless night’s negative effect on our metabolism. But the cherry on top is that just one night tossing and turning sabotages your dietary efforts the very next day by gravitating you towards junk foods. This combination increases your chances of becoming overweight and obese, which carries with it more problems for sleep.
Sleep issues torment the obese twice as often as people with a ‘normal’ body mass index (BMI). In a Swedish sleep study, with 18,000+ participants, insomnia was strongly associated with weight gain, although causation is impossible to pinpoint.
Overweight and obese people have a lower core body temperature. This cooler body is, in part, due to the energy sparing mechanism of insulin resistance, which preserves fuel for storage versus burning it for energy or heat. Like rationing logs, when stranded in a blizzard. The afflicted feels colder, but it’s 2020, so the thermostat gets twisted, and the discomfort fades.
