Insomniacs deal with endless sleepless nights wrestling with fatigue, the feeling that one may fall into deep sleep any second but staying constantly unable to gain that peaceful state. Sleep, and dreams as well, have long been proven to be survival mechanism and the inability to fall asleep can thus have hazardous effects on one’s health.

The link between poor health and weight gain has long been probed though scientists hadn’t been able to hit upon the reason for this. They finally have. In a research conducted by UCLA, Sarosh Motivala, assistant professor of psychiatry of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behaviour, found that chronic insomnia upsets the working of one of two hormones regulating the primeval need of hunger. Ghrelina nd Leptin, the two hormones under study, had not been previously scrutinised during nocturnal hours. The study revealed that while leptin levels were roughly the same between insomniacs and the control group i.e. healthy sleepers, ghrelin levels were 30% lower in insomniacs.

The decreased levels of ghrelin, instead of decreasing hunger and thus body weight, did the exact opposite since ghrelin levels switched back and increased during the day, rousing appetite and thus body weight. The study would appear in the May issue of the journal of Psychoneuroendocrinology.

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Via: ScienceDaily