By Chiagoziem ‘Jason’ Okoronkwo

I get asked a lot about diets, weight loss, pot-bellies, aesthetics, food, foods that give pot-bellies, what’s inside said pot-bellies and the occasional question about hair growth (go figure). But Sleep? Never.

In a society that is productivity driven which constantly makes demands of us, important things like our health get left behind; especially our sleep. People sometimes go for days on an average of 3 hours a night of sleep to get things done.

Unfortunately, the truth is you can’t cheat your physiology.

There is only so much coffee and stimulants between you and the over caffeinated zombie-like worker army constantly chasing the next deadline. Sleep is terribly underrated. The lack of which will severely limit your ability to perform maximally. Scientists have shown how much of our foundation of physical and mental health is based on sleep.

Sleep keeps you healthy and may also be able to give you that waistline you’ve always wanted. There are studies showing a relationship between increasing waistlines and the general lack of sleep in certain populations. So as much as eating less Iya Basira’s ofada rice may help your ever increasing waistline, better quality sleep a lot more.

Sleep deprivation also affects your health by significantly increasing inflammation. Inflammation aggravates several conditions and can subtly reduce your quality of life and health. It also affects insulin sensitivity and increases the production of cortisol. Cortisol(the stress hormone) checks insulin(the hormone that stores nutrients). The balance between their levels in your body keeps your blood sugar level. A bad night of sleep changes that balance between them, affects your blood sugar and sends you in the direction of large chunks of your colleague’s birthday cake.

The lack of quality sleep could also make you a rampaging binge eater. Changes in sleep quality even for a night could drastically affect leptin production, increasing ghrelin production and disrupting your appetite regulation. Ghrelin cues hunger, saying you should eat and leptin tells you you’ve had enough to eat. Studies show that sleeping as little as an hour less than usual could make you eat up to 40% more food.

Sleep deprivation also causes hormonal changes like producing less growth hormone and testosterone. Both are required to maintain your fat to lean body mass ratio and help recovery from hard workouts. This happens when the production of melatonin, which is produced when you’re asleep, is reduced. This means that how much sleep you get is indicative of how much fat you could lose on a diet and exercise. A study with subjects on a caloric restrictive diet had people that were sleep deprived lose less fat than others with normal sleep.

Clearly, sleep is the habit you really want to fix if you’re looking to improve health, overall performance, focus, lose fat, increase efficiency and generally live better. In another article, I’ll make some recommendations on how to get better, quality sleep. Till then, be sure to sleep well.