Effects of Sleep Loss on Weight Gain

For a number of reasons, sleep loss has been associated with weight gain whether it’s because of an increase in appetite due to hormonal imbalances or craving sugar-laden products to stay awake. Few studies, however, have focused on underlying tissue-specific molecular responses to acute sleep loss. In a recent study, adipose and skeletal tissues were obtained after one night of sleep loss and one full night of sleep. What they discovered was that there were critical differences in how these tissues responded to sleep loss.

In summary, sleep loss was associated with a downregulation of the glycolytic pathway in skeletal muscle, but an upregulation of that pathway in the adipose tissue. Sleep loss also affected genome-wide DNA methylation in adipose tissue, which increased adiposity...