Fitness and Sleep: How Losing Weight Help Sleep Problems

Generally, experts claim that sleep and diet are both important factors to weight loss, and the lack of both can lead to weight gain. But despite that insight, people in the U.S. still experience problems on getting enough sleep every night, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Since sleep and dieting are both chained events, a recent study shows that there is a way to help people get a shuteye: dieting to lose weight to gain more sleep. This is the link between fitness and sleep, losing weight can help with sleep problems.

Many healthy people may claim they do have a hard time sleeping, or that sleeping patterns vary between individuals. But a group of researchers from University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine found no matter what your body weight is, actively losing weight can help us sleep better.

In terms of regulating sleep, body weight is not an important factor, rather it is just a side factor for the purpose of getting a good sleep, and actively losing weight can help out.

On an experiment, the researchers used lab mice to prove the truth in their hypothesis. Dividing the mice into 2 groups. Group 1 consists of mice with regular diet while group 2 is composed of high fat diets. This was made for 8 weeks.

On the 9^th week, group 1 is divided into A & B as well as group 2 into A & B. Groups A remained on their diets, while the B Groups switched diets, gaining and losing weight respectively.

Researchers found that mice which remained on high fat diet up to 9^th week sleep more hours but fragmented, having less frequent deep sleeps. Groups of mice that switched their diets had the same body weight as each other, but completely different sleep schedules.

Mice initially on regular diet then switched to fat diet, experienced decrease in time sleep, having REM (Rapid Eye Movement) and similar sleep fragmentations. But mice that did high fat to regular diet resulted differently, they slept better and lost weight as well.

So it not necessarily mean that in order to have better sleep, you must first lose weight. It is in a manner that while you lose weight, you already start having better sleep.

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