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'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.
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.
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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.)
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Actually, there is something you can do about it. Keep the same schedule on the weekends that you do during the week. And ensure you get enough sleep every night. The problem as described in the summary is that people will stay up late and sleep in on the weekends, but will go to be early and get up early on the weekdays. The problem isn't some "biological schedule" it's that your schedule changes between the weekends and the weekdays. Your body can't adjust fast enough.
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Yup.
Made a comment about this below. I used to run through the week on 4 or 5 hours a night, then crash on the weekends. It's tough to do, but if you force yourself to get a decent amount of sleep through the week, and cut back on the sleeping in (I still do sleep in a few hours.. ) it makes a huge difference. It's hard to give up that extra "winding down" time at the end of the day.. but not feeling like a zombie all the time is worth it.
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.
Controlling when you sleep (making it consistent) and when you are exposed to bright light (again, consistency PLUS avoiding it 3 hours before bed time) will get you on track without a heroic effort, unless of course you work a non-traditional shift like 8pm-5am and can't avoid being awake from 5am to 1pm on some days (if you are in the rhythm to sleep those hours 7 days a week you can get along just fine). That kind of schedule swing is a serious bitch.
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!
Look up sleep apnea. And stop spreading jaded ignorance.
It happened to me with kids. I haven't slept-in in years because my kids get up right after the sun comes up.
Same here, if only the days were longer. We need to find some way to slow the rotation of the earth.
That sounds like a lot of work, and I'm pretty tired.
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It happened to me with kids. I haven't slept-in in years because my kids get up right after the sun comes up.
Wait until they're teenagers - it will be you telling them its time to get up.
> Your weight is a result of calories in vs. calories out.
Actually, it's not. There are plenty of studies demonstrating that chronic sleep-deprivation makes you MUCH more likely to gain weight from a given number of calories. Your body goes into 'crisis' mode, and becomes more aggressive and efficient about converting calories into fat. The fact that you're likely to end up ravenously hungry and fatigued multiples the effect, but even if you kept exercise and calorie count constant, you'd be more likely to gain weight after extended chronic sleep deprivation.
The same phenomenon has been observed with some psychiatric drugs. In particular, one class of drugs used for treating schizophrenia. I don't remember the exact details, but I remember reading that there were a couple of them that *observably* slowed down the patient's metabolism for reasons that aren't entirely understood (and researchers are certainly trying, because if they can figure out what makes them slow somebody's metabolism down, they might be able to come up with a blockbuster drug that speeds it up and enables effortless weight loss. Assuming, of course, the drug doesn't end up having drug-induced mania or psychosis as a side effect).
Delayed sleep phase disorder
Yeah, it's exactly what it sounds like. My natural sleeping pattern makes me go to bed around 3-4am. And sleep for ~8-9 hours. And no, just waking early in the weekend does not help. This has been going on since before I started school, and nothing tried the last 20 years have changed that one bit.
I'm tired of friends and complete strangers saying stuff like "Just change your rhythm" or "You're just lazy, I did it just fine!" - I have tried, it Does Not Help. It does not change a thing.
In fact, the disorder is sometimes referred to as "social jet lag" - it might even be the exact disorder the article is hinting at.
Your comment sounds like an asshole seeing a guy in wheelchair, and saying "He's just lazy. Look, I can walk just fine, and so can my friends!"
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