How Sleep Contributes to Weight Loss | Jonny Bowden | Big Think

How Sleep Contributes to Weight Loss

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Insufficient or interrupted sleep releases the hormone cortisol—which triggers our most dangerous fat, and can even reduce lifespans. But there are a number of simple strategies to help you reap the benefits of a full night of sleep.

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Jonny Bowden:

Jonny Bowden, PhD, is a nationally known expert on weight loss, nutrition and health, and best-selling author of seven books including “The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth”, “Living Low Carb: Controlled Carbohydrate Eating for Long-Term Weight Loss” and “The Most Effective Natural Cures on Earth”. A member of the Editorial Advisory Board for Men’s Health magazine and the health columnist for several magazines, Dr. Bowden has written or contributed to articles for dozens of publications (print and online) including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, America Online, Forbes, Time, Oxygen, Marie Claire, Diabetes Focus, GQ, US Weekly, Cosmopolitan, Self, Fitness, Family Circle, Allure, Men’s Heath, Prevention, Natural Health, and many others. Dr. Bowden has appeared on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, and CBS as an expert on nutrition, weight loss, fitness and health. He’s a member of the American College of Nutrition and the American Society for Nutrition, is adjunct faculty at Clayton College for Natural Health, and is a much in-demand speaker at conferences and events across the country. His most recent book is “The Most Effective Ways to Live Longer”.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Question: How unhealthy is a lack of sleep?

Jonny Bowden: Well there is a lot of things to say about sleep, both as an anti-aging strategy, as a weight loss strategy, believe it or not, and as a general strategy for health. I’d consider getting a good night’s sleep is definitely one of the five top strategies you can do to extend you life. And here’s why. A lot of stuff happens during sleep. Biochemicals are replaced, hormones, like melatonin are secreted and growth hormone. These are very, very important for human health.

We have adapted to this electrically based society in which lights are on all the time and computers are available all the time. And if you go back, again, to our heritage as a species, as the human species, we kind of went to bed when the sun went down and we woke up when the sun came back in. And that is closer to our natural biorhythms. So, we’re very sleep deprived. The standard advice is to get seven to eight hours. It’s not bad advice. But I am a big believer in biochemical individuality. I think people can adapt to a fairly wide range of foods and diets and sleep, but I don’t think we do well with four or five hours, and we certainly don’t do well with anxious sleep, interrupted sleep, and I don’t think that sleep gets the credit it should get as an anti-aging strategy.

If you look at these very long-lived cultures where these little pockets are around the world they are called the “Blue Zones” where people routinely live to 100. Now, they don’t take Ambien. They don’t have sleep problems. The sun goes down, they go to sleep. They have a good night’s sleep, they wake up in the morning and I think that goes a long way towards getting us back on track as far as our biology goes, as far as our biorhythms go, the replacement of our hormones, and I think it’s a very, very important and neglected part of health.

Question: What is the link between sleep and body weight?

Jonny Bowden: When you don’t sleep in an ideal way, when it’s restless and you wake up and you’ve got nightmares and you’ve got, or you run to the bathroom 10 times, or any of the things that tend to keep up through the night, you’re body sees that as a stressor. And it responds by releasing a hormone called cortisol. Cortisol is the enemy, not only of health, but also of a lean body.

Cortisol sends a message to the body that you’re in an emergency state and you’d better refuel. It also sends a message to the body to store weight around the middle, which as we now know and is pretty much uncontested, that that is the most dangerous kind of fat. It’s the most metabolically active kind of fat, and you know the apple shape is definitely more dangerous in terms of diabetes and metabolic symptoms and heart disease than say the pear shaped distribution of fat. So, cortisol contributes to all of that.

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