Sleep is unfortunately taken for granted, despite being one of the fundamental pillars of good health. A good cup of coffee and splashes of water may make you feel ready to go, or you may try to compensate for the lost hours over you feel ready to go, or you may try to compendate for the lost hours over the weekend by sleeping until noon. However, the ramifications of sleep loss eventually begin to creep up.
This actually shows up as a very silent frustration that you may otherwise not be able to pinpoint so easily. It appears as unexplained weight gain, even when you are doing everything right, such as following a calorie deficit and meeting your daily step count. The missing clue could be that you are sleeping fewer hours than recommended. It may seem unrelated, but sleep loss can actually trigger a chain of events in your body that leads to weight gain.
We asked an expert why this happens and how insufficient sleep is linked to weight gain. Dr Gagandeep Singh, founder of Redial Clinic, told us that he often sees patients in his clinic who skimp on sleep and subsequently experience intense cravings. This is why he treats short sleep as a metabolic problem, instead of just a lifestyle problem.
Describing more on the approach refinement based on what he would observe in his clinic, the physician said, “In my clinic, I’ve come to treat short sleep as a metabolic event, not a lifestyle footnote. When you don’t sleep enough, your body doesn’t simply feel tired. It becomes biochemically primed to gain fat and crave the exact foods that worsen insulin resistance.”
What happens when you don’t sleep well?
What is your body’s response to poor sleep? Dr Singh described a process that illustrates how poor sleep takes a toll on your stress hormones and, in turn, influences your cravings, which eventually make you gain weight.
“Sleep deprivation pushes cortisol, your stress hormone, higher and keeps it there. Cortisol tells the body to hold on to fat, particularly around the abdomen, and it nudges blood sugar up even when you haven’t eaten. At the same time, the hormones that govern appetite go haywire,” he said.
Dr Singh then elaborated about how your hunger hormone gets activated and why your cravings heighten. “Ghrelin, which signals hunger, rises. Leptin, which tells you you’ve had enough, falls. So you wake up hungrier, you feel full later, and the food you reach for is rarely a boiled egg. It’s biscuits, sugary chai, last night’s leftover parathas.”
Are you in danger of any health problem because of poor sleep?
Now that we understand how sleep deprivation may contribute to weight gain by triggering a chain of physiological changes, it is important to examine whether it also heightens the risk of other health problems. The doctor identified impaired insulin sensitivity as a key factor, linking inadequate sleep with several metabolic health concerns.
How? He explained, “The pancreas compensates by producing more insulin, and high circulating insulin is the soil in which weight gain, fatty liver and eventually type 2 diabetes grow. This is the part most people miss.”
The doctor emphasised insulin as the ‘real driver’ for several sleep-related issues, be it developing lifestyle diseases or gaining weight.
Chronic sleep loss affects every major physiological system, as it does not spare reproductive health either. Dr Singh described, “Chronic sleep loss disturbs reproductive hormones, which is why I so often see it tangled up with irregular cycles in women and flagging testosterone and energy in men.”
Lack of sleep affects your muscles too, because, as per the expert, your body requires deep sleep’s energy to preserve the muscles. And again circling back to impaired insulin sensitivity, less muscle means it cannot absorb and use glucose from the bloodstream. So a person with less muscle mass has sugar circulating in the blood.
Why should you fix your sleep?
Sleep should not be sidelined, and the aforementioned reasons shed light on why. From late-night doomscrolling to work commitments, sleep often bears the brunt as people carve out a significant portion of their bedtime for activities they cannot fit into the day.
What is the doctor’s advice and why is he advocating for prioritising sleep, even if you are regularly exercising and eating well? “What I tell my patients is this. You cannot out-diet or out-train poor sleep. If you are sleeping badly, fixing it is not optional self-care. It is a clinical intervention, every bit as important as what sits on your plate.”
There is no replacement for sleep. Even if you are eating healthy and exercising, you may still not see the expected fitness results if you continue to sleep poorly.
Note to readers: This article is for informational purposes only and not a substitute for professional medical advice. Always seek the advice of your doctor with any questions about a medical condition.
