Sleep: Diet in the News

A Science Friday piece  I listened to on podcast today talked about a study that showed sleep deprivation did NOT prevent weight loss - just slowed it down and prevented healthy weight loss.  The sleep-deprived cadre in this study lost weight, but they lost muscle mass, while the folks who got lots of sleep lost fat.  OK - we know lack of sleep is really bad for us, and this is just more bad news, because who ever gets 8 1/2 hours sleep like the folks in this study? So its just more stacking the deck - if you are heavy, you are more likely to sleep badly, and that makes it harder to reduce your fat... The only saving grace here is that this is very typical of all weight loss research - it was a really tiny study (10 people, only five in each group!) and they only followed them for two weeks (what weight loss regime has any meaning at all for only two weeks?)

The call-in radio show digressed into a lot of discussion of sleep research and health interactions, and got me thinking about my own pathetic sleep. I wear this magic device that measures my actual sleep, but what good does it do me? I've now got ten months of tracking my sleep almost every single night, but I'm not using that information to help myself. But I'm a data hound, and now I'm on the trail. How can I make this heap of data points tell me a story about what is going on, a story that will help me change something and feel better and lose weight more easily?

OK, first just look at the bare facts. How much sleep do I get? Between six and seven hours, regularly. This is not enough. Is this because I do not have sleep opportunities (I don't go to bed)? Or is it because I'm tossing and turning and not sleeping in the middle?What can I do to make my average be closer to eight hours a night? What can I do to prevent the really short nights, when it is less than six hours? I don't have all the answers to these questions, but I will dig into it more deeply in the near future.  I've got the data, and I'm really good at diving into this kind of an analysis.