Slashdot Mirror
'Social Jetlag' May Be Making You Fat
sciencehabit writes "A new study suggests that, by disrupting your body's normal rhythms, your alarm clock could be making you overweight. The study concerns a phenomenon called 'social jetlag.' That's the extent to which our natural sleep patterns are out of synch with our school or work schedules. When we wake up earlier than we're supposed to — or spend all weekend sleeping in and then get up at 6 am on Monday — it makes our body feel like it's spending the weekend in one time zone and the week in another. For people who are already on the heavy side, greater social jet lag corresponds to greater body weight."
Thank God! All this time I thought it was the Coke and Fritos doing it to me!
And here I thought it was staying up late (and eating snacks) while doing things online with friends in a different time zone.
If your biological schedule doesn't match up with the rest of your area, it will be hard to find a job that matches your schedule. All I can do is watch my weight and eat/exercise accordingly.
Has nothing to do with the italian grinder you went to bed on, just the rhythmic imbalance. Fix that, change nothing else and the fat will literally melt away. Articles like this pander to the ever expanding population of morbidly obese...probably consciously. Editor's meeting: "Write more stories fat people will like, since everybody's fat".
From the article:
From the slashdot post:
"or spend all weekend sleeping in and then get up at 6 am on Monday"
These look to me like behaviors of people who don't take care of themselves and/or who are lazy/inactive. I don't see how sleep is the cause. It makes more sense to me that it'd be the other way around...that inactivity tends to help cause obesity, and also correlates with sleeping in whenever you can, for example.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
What's going on here? The url says slashdot but the summary looks like cosmo.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
The buttons on my clock stopped working ~11 years ago, and I never bothered to replace the clock. So now I just wake up when I wake up. My internal clock is pretty reliable, waking me between 5 and 6 am each morning. (Assuming I go to bed at a decent hour like 9 or 10..... if I stay up late then naturally I sleep late.)
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
I don't get enough sleep during the week, so I drink a lot of sugary, caffeinated beverages at times to keep me awake at my desk job. That's not healthy, I know. However, I also take decently good multivitamins, cut out caffeine and switch to water by mid-afternoon, work out regularly following a personal trainer's advice, and tend to eat intelligently at mealtimes. I don't eat chips, popcorn, candy, cookies, or whatever else during the day.
This is what works for me, and I'm quite fit by any account. Right in the middle of the recommended weight chart for my height, actually, after a lot of long years in this business. So I would recommend giving it a try to anyone who's struggling with their own routine. Once you get into a habit, it's a lot easier to keep it going.
I didn't watch their study (it's a video!), but I'm going to have to disagree. I had a circadian rhythm disorder (switches between DSPS and N24); basically a broken body clock. My body wants to get to bed and wake up at different times each day and I go through hell trying to get that matched up with when I need to be awake for school, team project meetings, and everything else I had to do. I swing from averaging 2-3 hours of sleep per 24 hour period to averaging 16 hours. One month last year I only slept ever other day. I was very suicidal before I figured out I had a sleeping disorder (everyone assumes you're really lazy as you're late to everything and always tired, but even 6 alarms clocks don't help).
The health effects of chronic sleep deprivation are very annoying and do cause physical damage, but I don't gain weight. When I'm tried, eating more helps me stay awake and make it through the day. However I end up burning up that energy due to not getting the down time when sleeping. The article only guesses that you gain weight because your digestive system isn't working as well since you're out of sync with your body clock. I'd guess it's more these people are tired and thus eating more to wake up and get more energy. However, they aren't as sleep deprived as me so they do get their down time at night. They overeat to force themselves awake but don't stay awake long enough to burn off the extra energy.
The study only links people who are already "on the heavy side". These people probably eat more per meal than the normal weight population, so their extra large breakfast has more of an effect.
Now I don't know if what I said has any factual basis, but I don't agree slighly adjusting heavy people's sleep times will allow them to manage their obesity. There are much better arguments for changing daylight savings times and better ways to manage obesity (input = output).
Actually if their digestive system is being disrupted, that means it isn't working as well. Wouldn't that cause weight loss as less things are extracted from the food? Or are people extra overeating because the food is less fulfilling? I find this study flawed. It didn't look at enough factors.
The news is way too full of all these studies etc that just seem to distract from the simple truth that you just plain must exercise...vigorously, and regularly...period. I'm so sick of everything I keep hearing...like all this new stuff about how horrific it is that I sit down at my job. Give me a break...and don't get me started about all these recommendations regarding walking. The main reason people have for not exercising it not having time, and walking...in addition to being neither a good cardie-vascular workout, or a good strength training workout...is the worst bang for your buck timewise. I have the aerobic fitness of someone 30 years younger than I...can do 100 pushups, and have about 10% body fat (at 58)...and I don't kill myself working out either...a total of about 5 hours a week...20 minutes of intense aerobics three times a week and extensive weight training twice a week.
Way, way too much bullshit getting thrown around...just do it!
From the article...
"...living 'against the clock' may be a factor contributing to the epidemic of obesity..."
You have to be kidding me. So they found a correlation? Yippie. I can find the correlation between number and pirates and global warming. Means nothing.
What's worse is that they don't even try to explain what's really going on here. Is it that metabolism is slower when things are out of order from circadian rhythm? Where are the citations for that suggestion? Is it actually a true case of causation with experimental evidence in biochemistry, or more regressions and "it looks this way, but we have no idea so here's a paper on it anyway" type of thing?
Or is it so much more simple? Maybe like... People are eating more calories than they burn?! No way! Common sense just can't come into play ever. Maybe people feel more hungry with less sleep! Oh goodness! Let's do a double regression on chronotypes and amount of sleep so that we can submit another paper and get more funding!
Your weight is a result of calories in vs. calories out.
Nothing else.
Yes, disrupting your sleep patterns may affect the "calories out" department slightly, but that is not what is making you fat. It is food that is making you fat. If you have some kind of magical body that violates the law of conservation of energy, please let the scientific community know immediately, otherwise it's time to put down the sandwich.
Conventional exercise recommendations are not based on what is best for you. They are based on what the physiologists think they have any hope of getting you to do, on the theory that anything is better than nothing.
Get out there and run.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
What in the world is a "social clock"? What's social about it? It doesn't seem to have anything to do with interaction.
So if we just sleep in every day instead of just on weekends, we'll lose weight. Brilliant.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16964783
"We often worry about lying awake in the middle of the night - but it could be good for you. A growing body of evidence from both science and history suggests that the eight-hour sleep may be unnatural."
We may, in fact, ALL BE DOING IT WRONG. If an 8 hour sleep cycle is indeed unnatural, then we're fighting our biological clock much more than we thought. Even if you get plenty of sleep.
You gain weight if you eat too much. It's the law. Lots of things might make you hungry, but you don't have to eat every time you feel like it.
Your slothy lifestyle is making you fat. But props for trying to redirect the blame though.
You hear that Super-Sized French Fries? It's not your fault I'm fat. It never was! I'm so sorry, please forgive me and let's get back together again...
One more excuse for the fatty's book, face it you get fat from taking in more calories than you burn, and being fat just doesn't bother you enough to do anything about it when everyone around you is fat.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Let me clarify this in case you get me wrong. I'm elitist in the regard that I support the elite (i.e., the persons who get to bed at a regular time, and more generally the disciplined practice of doing so). I personally share your problem of rolling my clock forward through lack of discipline.
Note that length-of-day disorder ("Non-24") does exist. But you don't have it. You have lack of discipline.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-24-hour_sleep-wake_syndrome#Prevalence :
Face the truth, it is your lack of self control that is making you fat. Had you more control, you would eat less, and exercise more. Stop blaming the world for your own shortcomings, your shitty life is the result of your shitty decisions and choices.
I will say that I tend to eat more when I'm tired, and a biological clock that's out of sync is one reason for being tired, but I'm not sure that being tired necessarily leads to weight gain by itself. I think it's more useful to separate the phenomena than to construct a Rube Goldberg or Toshiba-like chain of cause and effect.
That said, my biological clock is closer to a 32-36 hour cycle than 24, which sucks. I went to bed at a respectable 10PM last night, so I probably won't start getting tired until around 4AM tomorrow morning.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
dynamics Lisa!
no energy intake, no chance of being fat
Every week, there's another "study" that blames obesity on something other than what really causes it: overeating.
There is no cause for obesity other than overeating. Period. We all must obey the laws of thermodynamics, and if we ingest more calories than we consume, we will gain weight.
Since apparently half of Americans are going to be obese soon, I guess they're not teaching basic science in school any longer. I guess the "consensus" is that overeating doesn't make you fat, and that it can be blamed on just about anything else.
Also, working from home and having to drive everywhere to get work completed is not conducive to weight loss.
Sure it may be cheaper for the company you work for, but it will cost later in health problems.
Interestingly enough I was just talking to a coworker about this today.
I have never been able to get on a "proper" sleep schedule. Ever since I was a kid. I have always hated getting up in the morning. I have always hated mornings period. The nicest thing about being of school age was I could have summers to readjust to my natural schedule. Having this time off was one of the best things of my time and I am damn sure contributed to my ability to stay skinny. I ate much more food as a teen than I do now--AND I ate much unhealthier. I have consistently been unable to lose the weight after I spent most of my childhood life (read: until I got a fulltime job) so skinny that people thought I was anorexic.
I have difficulty getting to sleep before 11P/12A. Sometimes this can indeed vary but my most natural sleep schedule is roughly around this time or later. I have tried everything under the sun to get to bed earlier, including lying down at 8 with the intent of sleeping by 10. I've forced myself to try these patterns and it cannot work for me.
I have 3 alarms in the morning to wake me up, and I try to get at *least* 7 hours/day of sleep. I know that my natural body clock wants me to sleep 8-10 hours (I had a very big habit of a 3AM-12PM sleep schedule since I was a teenager) but it refuses to get to sleep earlier than 11PM. This does not matter if I wake up at 6AM, 7AM, or 8AM.
This is just who I am, and I know I"m suffering for it because I cannot make my natural body fit with my work schedule.
I have an awful sleep schedule. I often keep completely different hours each day.
Yet I'm 5'10 and only weigh 140lbs. I call bunk on this
There is a bit of a sliding scale involved - as you lose weight you have less body mass to maintain so your BMR will drop. Likewise when operating in a calorie shortage for prolonged periods your body will adapt, getting more efficient and reducing the number of calories necessary to accomplish the same tasks, as well as being more aggressive about storing excess calories. Net result is that at a given calorie+exertion level you will at first lose weight, then plateau, and maybe even start to rebound. The solution, obviously, is you need to periodically update your plan slightly, either cutting more calories or burning them, until you stabilize within an acceptable range.
The basic fact though is that 3000 Calories ~= 1lb of fat, that's chemistry. If you eat 100 calories less than you burn every day you MUST lose about a pound a month, that energy has to come from somewhere. The trick is to cut calories without cutting food and nutrients, which can be tricky if you need to do more than cut out the obvious junk food. Staying away from processed foods and eating lots of high-fiber alternatives can make that a lot easier - make your body have to work as much as possible for each calorie, and fiber has added the advantage that ~30% of the calories are in a form our bodies can't digest. Raw foods in general help too - we've evolved to let fire do some or digesting for us, breaking down complex starches into simpler things we can digest more easily - cooking can boost the human-accessible calories by 20-30%. If you're really desperate I suppose you could even start eating a lot of grass and sawdust - our bodies can't really process cellulose at all.
There's also the problem of maintaining enough energy to keep exerting yourself when operating in a calorie deficit. Cutting back on fat can help, since your body normally burns a 50/50 blend of fat and carbs, and if you runs low on carbs you hit "The Wall" that endurance athletes speak of and your body doesn't like operating there and it takes serious willpower to keep going. The fact that it also rapidly switches to burning 90+% carbs for the first half-hour or so when you're strenuously exerting yourself doesn't help with the exercising either, at least not if trying to burn fat.
And there are also certain long-term penalties for having been overweight - your body has special fat cells for storing fat, sort of like mini fuel tanks. When they fill up you grow more cells to handle the excess. However, when losing weight the cells don't die off, at least not quickly, they just all run nearer empty, and are more prone to filling up again. Remember these things evolved to help us survive through winter, famines, etc, if they're empty your body gets "worried" - obviously you needed them at some point in the past or they wouldn't have grown, if they're nearly empty then the next crisis to hit could kill you.
Finally there's the personal variations in metabolism - some people just don't store much fat even when consistently overeating, while others seem to store every spare calorie. The latter was no doubt a great survival trait once upon a time, but makes maintaining a health weight a real challenge in a world of plenty.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Well I have no social life and I'm pretty skinny. kPOW.
Neither the author nor the submitter RTFA when they developed the title - it clearly states that surfaces must be conductive, which is an awfully long way from "anything". The article even mentions smart couches, but then goes on to say saying workarounds are required - non-conductive items must be coated with something conductive.
Stupid non-tech journalists writing tech articles.
for forcing us to work on unfavorable schedules and jobs just to put food on table and pay the bills. In a proper society people get paid for doing what they love to do, what they do best, at their preferred schedule.
No kidding! And all these years I thought getting fat was simply due to self-indulgence and that all other reported factors were minor, or a result of this. Not too many fat people came out of the WW2 concentration camps!
You don't know what the fuck you're talking about.
Your post needs to be -1, Loud Mouthed Idiot.
Yes, sleep patterns, or the disruption thereof from an irregular sleep schedule, most certainly does play a huge role in the body's energy (fat) conservation strategies.....amongst countless other things.
What a load of crap!
Well, I'm still the same weight as I was in High School, if that were the case I'd weigh 1,000 pounds after 57 years of having insomnia and a majorly fucked up varying sleep schedule.
"We have shown that if you live against your body clock, you're more likely to smoke, to drink alcohol, and drink far more coffee."
Apparently I'm "special" then, as I do none of that and I'm fucking thin.
Pork "science" if I've ever seen it, all it "proves" is that they found a (likely) weak correlation with folks who are already heavy, and that the researchers are obsessed with "weighty" issues when they could be preforming science that can actually help society rather than pointing out yet again... 'look, fatty".
Christ... all this fake science has got my brain "over heated", now I need to yawn...
What next,too much fresh air is causing a clear head and outbreak of intelligence?? BUT obviously not when it comes to people being over weight!!! Wait,you could always try that non fat chocolate or drink a crate of red wine because its good for your heart!!!! Human beings have a crap habit for latching on to any excuse for problems they have!
>>Your weight is a result of calories in vs. calories out.
True. But what happens in between is what matters. It is called metabolism
>> Yes, disrupting your sleep patterns may affect the "calories out" department slightly, but that is not what is making you fat. It is food that is making you fat.
It is both. Sleep restriction or sleep deprivation have been shown to limit normal insulin activity. Instead of pulling glucose into cells where it can be used, the glucose remains in circulation. Some is converted to fat. The higher blood glucose levels is also known as diabetes. So when controlling for other factors, weight gain and diabetes (type II) is seen with sleep deprivation.
Sleep deprivation also changes hormone levels relating to appetite and satiety (feeling full). Look up grehlin and leptin. This fits with the "calories in" part but is driven by biological factors rather than personal failing and character flaws.
Less sleep ==>more hungry. Less sleep==> more fat storage.
Yes, people to should eat less and exercise more. I give this advice to patients that I treat. They should also sleep in more natural patterns. I give this advice as well. The motivation, concentration and executive function required to manage new routines are brain functions that also fall victim to sleep deprivation. Put another way, sleep deprived people are less effective than well rested people. So the capacity to work out a new diet (cooking, shopping and time management) is a greater challenge. Ditto exercise. It is still doable and therefore you will read slashdot contributions from those who have been successful. They are probably more to the right side of the bell curve and high functioning even when sleep deprived. But the plural of anecdotes is not data and the population at large will not have the same level of success without health care guidance.
>>Those who cannot understand the box are doomed to think inside it.
Evidently.
That comment should be rated +1 Funny. This place has really gone downhill.
It's been keeping me skinny. I eat less when I sleep in because I usually skip a meal. Or maybe I just have the good bacteria that keep me from getting fat, or what I eat + exercise. Whatever works.