Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D to indicate the answer to each of the questions from 22 to 28.
If you are trying to shed a few kilograms from your body weight, you will find a wide range of methods being recommended by fitness enthusiasts or health experts, promising dramatic weight reductions. But what if a good night's sleep can be just as effective as these? A new study suggests that this can actually be true.
In a trial with 80 overweight young adults, Dr Esra Tasali of the University of Chicago's sleep centre and her colleagues found that increased sleep duration reduced participants' overall caloric intake by an average of 270 calories per day, which would result in roughly 12 kg of weight loss over three years if the effects were maintained over a long term. "If healthy sleep habits are maintained over longer duration, this would lead to clinically important weight loss over time," said Dr Tasali. "Many people are working hard to find ways to decrease their caloric intake to lose weight - well, just by sleeping more, you may be able to reduce it substantially."
This study not only examines the effects of sleep extension on caloric intake but, importantly, does so in a real-world setting, with no control over participants' dietary habits. Over the course of two weeks, participants slept in their own beds, tracked their sleep with wearable devices, and followed their normal lifestyle without any instructions on diet or exercise. "Most other studies on this topic in labs are short-lived, for a couple of days, and food intake is measured by how much participants consume from a fixed diet," said Tasali. "In our study, we only manipulated sleep, and had the participants eat whatever they wanted."
One of the unexpected findings from the study is that a single sleep counselling session could change people's bedtime habits enough to improve the amount of sleep they got. "We simply coached each individual on good sleep hygiene, and discussed their own personal sleep environments, providing tailored advice on changes they could make to improve their sleep duration," Tasali said. Following just a single session, participants increased their average sleep duration by over an hour a night.
Ultimately, Tasali and her team hope to examine the underlying mechanisms that may explain these results, and believe this work should spur new, larger studies to determine if extending sleep can support weight-loss programs and help prevent or reverse obesity.
(Adapted from hindustantimes.com; theguardian.com)
