How Much Sleep is Enough to Burn Fat and Improve my Health?
1-2 nights of sub 7 hours of sleep results in the following:
Reduces your insulin sensitivity by 19-25%. This means that you’ll have 19-25% higher blood sugar levels after anything you eat.
Lowers your fat burning hormones/enzymes by 30%. This means you have a 30% reduction in how much fat you can potentially lose for the day.
Lowers your leptin (hormone that tells your brain that you're full) levels by 18%. This means that you’ll likely overeat at every meal.
Increases your ghrelin (hormone that tells your brain that you’re hungry) levels by 28%. This means that you’ll likely always feel hungry to some degree all day long.
70% reduction in killer cell counts that protect your body from bacteria and viruses
50% reduction in antibody response to vaccines
Low energy (especially after lunch)
Elevated stress levels
Elevated resting heart rate
Overreact to small stressors
Poor mood
Low work productivity
This all puts you on the path to accumulating body fat, prediabetes, type II diabetes, elevated stress levels, high blood pressure, elevated blood lipids, chronic fatigue, anxiety, depression, and getting sick more often.
A night of 5-6 hours of sleep is even worse causing the following:
Lose muscle mass vs fat while you sleep. This is due to the brain trying to restore the body quickly, when it doesn’t get 7 hours to do so, and will convert any protein in your blood/breakdown muscle into sugar to try and finish everything before you wake up earlier then you should.
Makes you 2x more likely to become prediabetic/type II diabetic/overweight.
1 week of sub 7 hours of sleep:
Alters the function of 711 genes negatively impacting people’s stress, immunity, metabolism, and inflammation.
3-12 weeks of sub 7 hours of sleep puts the following chronic health conditions into motion:
Chronic Fatigue
Overweight
High Blood Pressure
Workout program plateaus
Chronic muscle pain
ADHD
Depression
Anxiety
Prediabetes/type II diabetes
Cardiovascular disease
Constipation
Dementia
Cancer
The adult brain and body needs 7 hours of high quality sleep to create new cells, all the hormones that you’ll use the next day, and repair/recycle damaged cells.
Sleep Debt and the consequences of not paying it back
Any length of time you sleep less than 7 hours will accumulate a recovery debt known as sleep debt. That sleep debt needs to be paid back ASAP throughout the next few days to 1 week. If it doesn’t, you’ll soon be experiencing the many chronic conditions that can happen in as little as 3-12 weeks listed above.
A few ideas to help you pay back sleep debt?
Short naps of 20-30 minutes (not recommended if you struggle to fall asleep) that must be completed with still 7 hours left in the day so it doesn’t impact your ability to fall asleep that night
Go to bed and wake up at the same times 7 days per week (make sure you have 8 hours of time to be asleep)
Next Steps
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