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Poor Sleep Alters Metabolism and Boosts Body's Ability To Store Fat, Study Finds (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The latest study provides new evidence that sleep deprivation has a direct influence on basic metabolism and the body's balance between fat and muscle mass. In the study, published in the journal Science Advances, 15 healthy volunteers each attended a testing session on two occasions, once after a normal night's sleep and once after staying up all night. During the visit, they gave samples of fat and muscle tissue and blood. After sleep deprivation, people's fat tissue showed changes in gene activity that are linked to cells increasing their tendency to absorb lipids and also to proliferate.

By contrast, in muscle the scientists saw reduced levels of structural proteins, which are the building blocks the body requires to maintain and build muscle mass. Previous epidemiological studies have also found shift workers and those who sleep less have lower muscle mass. This may be in part down to lifestyle factors, but the latest work shows that there are also fundamental biological mechanisms at play. The study also found an increase in inflammation in the body after sleep deprivation, which is a known risk factor for type 2 diabetes.

13 of 233 comments (clear)

  1. Not surprising, but good data to have. by Mal-2 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Sleep deprivation is a source of chronic stress at a basic level. It's not all that surprising that it causes neurological effects, but ALSO systemic stress-related effects.

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  2. Something I've been wondering by rsilvergun · · Score: 5, Insightful

    more and more we're finding that people's failings aren't their own. That a variety of physical ailments have broad, cascading effects on every aspect of human life. We figured out that underfed women give birth to babies with reduced mental capacity. That poverty and stress impact rational behavior and decision making. That people sleep less as they age due to hormonal changes and now that lack of sleep leads to weight gain (gut bacteria play a big role too).

    As long as I've been alive one of the central narratives in my life has been that people who fail at life did so because they lack good moral character. It's been pretty well pounded into my skull. Sometimes overtly ( "Welfare Queens" and folks convinced panhandlers are making a kililng ) and sometimes less so ("You can be do anything if you put your mind to it!" and "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps!").

    Science is challenging that. There really are "born losers". Folks for whom nothing ever seems to go right because it doesn't. Moreover life really does kick you when you're down.

    What I'm wondering is if we're going to change anything in response. I don't expect the public at large to. But, well, /. is a science focused forum. And the science is pretty clear here. So are we going to start seeing a change of mind? And are we going to see folks acting on that?

    I'm not so sure. Yeah, this is a science oriented forum, but it's also a forum with an aging population. And as people get older they get more conservative. Less emphatic. Funny that; I read somewhere science has found that the part of your brain associated with empathy atrophies in old age...

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    1. Re:Something I've been wondering by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It is *also* true that certain character flaws will lead to one being a failure. People who refuse to take responsibility and self-motivate are never going to achieve as much.

      So, a fat person may be fat because of their combination of metabolism and gut bacteria and so on. Such that when they eat a normal and reasonable amount of food, and even get some exercise, they stay fat. That happens. But it *also* happens that some people just over-indulge in unhealthy food and they don't exercise at all.

      And further, in the former case, the person is not doomed. If the person is truly motivated, they can bust their ass, eat super-healthy, and even do things like get a fecal transplant to favor the correct gut bacteria, and make significant improvement. The temptation is to point at the science and throw up one's hands in defeat, using it as an enabler of continued bad behavior.

      This doesn't mean that wisdom and morality will fix one's problems. Depending on details, it is simply not enough. But neither is the opposite extreme true. Personal problems are still very heavily influenced by one's character, and the need for personal responsibility is still present.

      What really hurts me is that huge numbers of people, most people, in fact, are born into poverty. The hand they are dealt is bad from the get-go. Even if they somehow manage to be brilliant saints, the sheer lack of economic opportunity keeps them trapped forever. It is unfair, and it is the most common case. I support poverty-fighting charities but there is only so much that can be done. Poverty *sucks,* and I consider it to be the greatest evil that flourishes within our species (though it is not unique to us, of course).

      Maybe, someday, we will find a better way. It hurts me that the current state is still the best we can do.

    2. Re:Something I've been wondering by tsa · · Score: 3, Informative

      Already in the 19th century a distinction was made between people who would not work and people who could not work; the deserving and the undeserving poor. Read Mayhew's brilliant London Labour and the London Poor.

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    3. Re:Something I've been wondering by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This is why we have so much sympathy for unemployed steel workers...

      We do. What we don't have is sympathy for people who are willfully ignorant. If you're sitting at a computer with access to the interwebs and you choose to use it to complain about how furriners terk your jerb instead of educating yourself about where them jerbs actually went, and someone explains the situation to you and you still don't change your ways, then there's no time to coddle you. It's time to move on to someone whose mind is not yet welded shut.

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    4. Re:Something I've been wondering by cayenne8 · · Score: 3, Informative

      And science does say exactly that, you dense motherfucker. By all means, show me the peer-reviewed study with the non-surgical technique that allows more than fractions of a percent of a cohort to lose more than 5 per cent of their body weight and keep it off for more than three years. Just 5 per cent.

      I have trouble with that, because, the obesity rate in the US is a relatively RECENT trend....

      You didn't have this many fat people waddling around the US just prior to the 70's.

      I don't think the humans in the US or the world have evolved such changes to the human metabolism, gut bacteria profile or anything else the give us the excuse that "its all genetics and we're pre-disposed to being fat, so why try to fight it?"

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  3. Re: External locus of control by phantomfive · · Score: 3, Insightful

    No, you've never struggled with weight loss, and you lack even basic research on the topic (and you have a cognitive bias because anytime you find evidence to the contrary you give an excuse to ignore that evidence, without even investigation). Body processes aren't static: if you drop 300 calories from your diet your body will adjust (mainly noticed by having no energy and wanting to sleep a lot), and you won't actually lose weight. Is it *possible* to lose weight? Of course, but it's not easy , and the limiting factor is knowledge not "will power."

    --
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  4. Re:External locus of control by Pfhorrest · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Calories eaten and absorbed minus calories burnt from exercise and resting metabolism will be stored as fat, sure. You might note that some parts of that sentence describe things not under voluntary control. I've italicized them for you in case your obvious mental deficit makes them hard for you to find.

    You know there are literally drugs that will make people just drop weight off, right? Problem is they have a bunch of terrible side-effects. These things were sold, and then problems with them found, and lawsuits were had over all of that. If you can put a chemical into a fat person and that will make them thin (so long as you don't care about the other health issues it causes) there are obviously factors at play besides just gluttony and sloth.

    Research like this is looking to what else, aside from those kinds of drugs, might affect those factors.

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  5. Re:External locus of control by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    That's complete and utter bull. I can make you gain fat tissue while you eat NOTHING, literally ZERO calories, all I have to do is inject you with lots of insulin. It will absolutely work. At least for the week or two until you die. When you're high on insulin, your body will first deplete its glucose, then its glycogen, then in desperation it will start breaking down muscles for protein to turn into glucose, WHILE STILL DESPERATELY STUFFING WHAT LITTLE ENERGY YOU HAVE INTO MORE FAT. And then you will literally die of starvation while also gaining fat at the same time.

    So how does someone eating literally NOTHING and gaining fat fit into your pretty little pet theory?

    Insulin is the "make fat" signal, and when your body is high on it, for whatever reason, you WILL make fat, period, even if your organism has to pretty much shut down metabolism, or literally eat itself to do it.

    And guess what. Typical Western diet and feeding patterns make people produce way more insulin than they need, even if they are on calorie deficit. Most diets do so as well. That's why they universally fail.

  6. Re:External locus of control by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If it were as easy as eating less and doing more exercise then people wouldn't find it so hard to lose weight. Clearly it's more than just balancing the calorie chequebook.

    The main problem is that once you have put on significant weight your body fights you to stop to taking it off. If you try to eat fewer calories it cranks up the feelings of hunger and reduces energy consumption, making you feel tired, which in turn has mental health consequences over the longer term.

    Even if you don't believe that, you must surely accept that blaming people for "gluttony" doesn't work either. Berating and denigrating them for being overweight does not help or encourage them to lose weight. From a pure engineering point of view we need a better solution.

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  7. Re:External locus of control by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Got any sources for those bold claims?

    Why yes, I do.

    https://onlinelibrary.wiley.co...

    The NYT has a more readable summary with the key graphs: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/0...

    How about this, you stop using food as entertainment and find something else. Also, vanity works far better as a reason to lose than health.

    If you really believe that people are fat because they use food as "entertainment" then it rather undermines your advice to them. Also, if vanity worked then obesity would be cured by the magazines in the doctor's waiting room. The constant bombardment of images of thin bodies and the promotion of that standard of beauty would have fixed the problem long ago.

    Shaming and depression are discredited as weight loss methods. In fact they tend to have the opposite effect. Fortunately medical science knows that and is making progress towards real solutions.

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  8. Devil is in the details. by DrYak · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Calories eaten and absorbed minus calories burnt from exercise and resting metabolism will be stored as fat, sure.

    Calories eaten is under everyones voluntary control. I'm not sure what your point is here.

    His point is that the sentence is running for a bit longer than that.

    Yes, "calories eaten", i.e.: things that you put into your mouth and chew on is more or less under voluntary control (though might be influenced by impulsive behaviours, etc.)
    But then you don't necessarily control how much of what's in there will get absorbed by the body. (though you can slightly influence the body's ability to uptake stuff, by changing the mix of what you eat. e.g.: Food's content of fiber has an influence of how fast it goes through your gut).

    You can voluntarily decide to burn some calories by doing exercice, but you don't have a direct control of how much the body will decide to burn for the rest.
    Some might have indirect influence (doing lots of exercice on a regular basis, body will use more energy to make and maintain muscle mass, even while you rest), (your body burn calories to maintain temperature and you can influence that), but there are tons of other processes, where the body could decide to burn energy instead of storing it long term, on which you don't have lots of direct control.

    That what the " {food eaten} - {calories burned} = {remaining fat} " crowd doesn't get.s
    When you look into the details, there are gazillion of various energy consuming processes going inside a body, most of which will have some impact on body mass distribution type, but which you can't directly control necessarily.

    Your basic mistake boils down to thinking of the body as a "bathtub" model : water (=food) goes in through the faucet (=eating), water (=burned calories) goes out through the drain (=exercice), the balance determine how much water there's in the tub (=fat storage).
    It's a bit too oversimplified.

    Something more realistic would be to imagine it as a conveyor belt. The belt rolls from your mouth (and the food on your plate) to the ass hole (and your toilet).
    Along the way there are dozens of worker on station, sometime picking things up (absorbing), sometime putting things down (excreting) and most of the time passing stuff among each other.
    Fat is just one guy making a pile of reservers, when instructed so (= include influence of tons of hormonal messages), and who can occasionally handle out packs or reserve whenever/if asked so by other guys working on the same chain.
    Physical effort is just one of the client that might request reserves from the fat guy.

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  9. Re: sleep affects hormones by Ionized · · Score: 4, Informative

    you're pretty smug for someone that is so terribly fucking wrong

    '100 calories' is not the exact immutable block you think it is. calories as it pertains to human diet are an inexact & best-guess science. 100 calories for you may not be 100 calories for someone else.

    differences in gut bacteria can have drastically different effects in nutrient & energy absorption. differences in metabolism can affect the amount of calories burnt by two individuals performing the same actions.

    two different people could eat the exact same food, perform the exact same physical activities, and one could gain weight while the other lost weight.