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Junk Food Cravings Linked To a Lack of Sleep, Study Suggests (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Writing in the Journal of Neuroscience, Peters and colleagues describe how they recruited 32 healthy men aged between 19 and 33 and gave all of them the same dinner of pasta and veal, an apple and a strawberry yoghurt. Participants were then either sent home to bed wearing a sleep-tracking device, or kept awake in the laboratory all night with activities including parlor games. All returned the next morning to have their hunger and appetite rated, while 29 of the men had their levels of blood sugar measured, as well as levels of certain hormones linked to stress and appetite. Participants also took part in a game in which they were presented with pictures of 24 snack food items, such as chocolate bars, and 24 inedible items, including hats or mugs, and were first asked to rate how much they would be willing to pay for them on a scale. During a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan, they were asked to choose whether or not they would actually buy the object when its price was fixed -- an experiment that allowed researchers to look at participants' brain activity upon seeing pictures of food and other items. A week later, the experiment was repeated, with the participants who had previously stayed up allowed to sleep, and vice versa.
The results showed that whether sleep-deprived or not, participants were similarly hungry in the morning, and had similar levels of most hormones and blood sugar. However, when participants were sleep-deprived, they were willing to pay more for a food snack than when rested, and had higher levels in their blood of a substance called des-acyl ghrelin -- which is related to the "hunger hormone" ghrelin, though its function is not clear. The fMRI results showed that when sleep-deprived, participants had greater activity in the brain's amygdala (where food rewards are processed) when food images were shown, and a stronger link between the price participants would pay for food and activity in the hypothalamus (which is involved in regulating consumption). Interactions between these two regions increased compared with when participants had slept.
The results showed that whether sleep-deprived or not, participants were similarly hungry in the morning, and had similar levels of most hormones and blood sugar. However, when participants were sleep-deprived, they were willing to pay more for a food snack than when rested, and had higher levels in their blood of a substance called des-acyl ghrelin -- which is related to the "hunger hormone" ghrelin, though its function is not clear. The fMRI results showed that when sleep-deprived, participants had greater activity in the brain's amygdala (where food rewards are processed) when food images were shown, and a stronger link between the price participants would pay for food and activity in the hypothalamus (which is involved in regulating consumption). Interactions between these two regions increased compared with when participants had slept.
I would like to see how they would react if they were buying snacks for someone else whose wellbeing they cared about, like their kid or their significant other. I wonder if they would pay more under any conditions.
men aged between 19 and 33
Are likely to be using weed!
I know for a fact that THC usage increases junk food cravings by 1,000%
Science confirms, people need to sleep or bad shit happens to them. Exactly how isn't clear nor does it fucking matter, you're not going to put sleep in a pill or somehow make it not needed. It's way too complex to emulate synthetically.
I like to eat Cheetos and drink Mountain Dew while I play Fortnite from my parent's basement.
I've smoked weed 3 times a day every day for the last 25-30 years, with a few lapses in there I admit. But I never eat nor crave junk food, not even a little. I eat healthy and cook all my own meals. Fast food = for lazy idiots.
If you're predisposed to eating crap, you will eat crap on weed or anything else.
I agree, this seems straight from the Captain Obvious Research Labs: if you don't get enough sleep, you make poor decisions.
Don't get me wrong, it's good to verify obvious or likely outcomes, but perhaps such results are not newsworthy. A more extreme example: "Sleep-deprived people are more likely to have romance with non-mammals." (Then again, such a study itself may make news regardless of the results.)
Table-ized A.I.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This is doing research on things any of them should have known from college late night study sessions. Next are they going to study if tying your shoes helps with running?
when I need to make it through the day but I couldn't sleep. As you get older you can't just keep pounding Red Bulls, they give you heart problems. But I still gotta make it through a day at work and I'm not expected to work less just because I'm tired and worn out. Heck, with inflation eating away at my pay and the threat of outsourcing and H1-B replacement I'm constantly trying to get ahead at my job. I feel like a shark, I have to keep moving or I stop breathing...
Modern life sucks. Especially in America's "Winner take all" system. It doesn't have to, but it does. What I don't get is why folks aren't more upset about it. We're so damned complacent. And when we do stand up for something it's just pointless violence. Never any real change. Never any real policy. Just pointless anger.
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That isn't my takeaway here. They mention they tested them against food and non-food items. They only really mention their reaction to food items. You could infer that means their reactions to the non-food items was relatively normal between the groups. It seems like one of the physiological responses to lack of sleep is to eat. We already have studies showing the effects of sleep deprivation on the metabolism. We've also had some studies on shopping while hungry and what we're more likely to target. This really just seems to be more of the same findings.
I wonder if Slashdot has any 400 pounders who can provide us with their informed take on the situation. It would be especially helpful if they wake up at an extremely early hour to take 3 separate buses to get to their low-end government IT job, and then basically pass out when they finally get home.
This is news?
Researcher have also found that if you put one foot in a tub a hot water and the other foot in a tub of cold water the subject reports have both hot and cold feet.
Certainly diminished inhibition seems to be a factor but that bit about the "hunger hormone" sounds interesting. Is the body trying to compensate for low energy from lack of sleep by getting some easily processed calories?
I stole this Sig
This seems like a very biased/blinkered conclusion, like they had this conclusion and were trying to find experimental results to fit, and once they did they were just Aha! Correlation! rather than considering what else it correlates with.
How is even specifically linked to 'junk food' whatever the heck that is?
From what I've read so far it seems more like "Sleep Deprivation linked to Impaired Judgement" should be the conclusion.
Afaik the consumption of junk food was also linked to stress, which can also be a byproduct of lack of sleep.
This really doesn't say much about junk food, in particular. Obviously, being awake takes more energy than being asleep, so it makes sense that they want more food.
"The study also did not compare the participants’ responses to healthy food."
Yes, but the food was something they were guaranteed to want right then, where the hat and mug had a pretty low demand, although I'm pretty sure the hat would've demanded a higher price if the room was extremely cold. So they just were making poor decisions for the thing they wanted right now, and not on objects they didn't care for.
This just shows that lack of sleep increases the "fuck it, just give me the thing now for whatever" reaction. I'm way less likely to negotiate when I'm tired.
I mean really? Someone paid to sponsor this quality of research? Who? A snacks company?
...I still think Whataburger include heroin in their double-double cheeseburgers.
When you're needy (like needing sleep), you'll try to fulfill your needs with anything (like food). If you want to loose weight, fulfill your needs, including non-hunger needs.
The study doesn't say how much they would be ready to pay for eating "the inedible items, including hats or mugs"!
I suspect more sleep deprivation is required to test more thoroughly my theory that sleep-deprived people prefer eating hat or mugs than regular food.
In an ongoing longitudinal study, this researcher has found a correlation between the consumption of beer and cravings for junk foods.
In repeated trials, the researcher sank a number of pints then stumbled home and without needing to resort to the use of an expensive and complicated fMRI machine, found that he was strongly inclined to give money to Mexican street vendors selling greasy bacon-wrapped hotdogs and stores serving hot pizza slices, burritos, tacos or kebabs with extra garlic sauce.
In trials where spirits were substituted for pints, the propensity for craving highly-processed junk food like McDonalds, Burger King, Carl's Jr and Jack in the Box increased in proportion to the increase in drunkenness brought about by not being used to ingesting such concentrated amounts of ethanol.
The cravings for such food have been found to not vary depending upon whether or not a meal was consumed before commencing the drinking sessions.