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((Image source: Wikimedia Commons)
BY STACEY WELSH ANCHOR CHRISTINA HARTMAN
More sleep = less junk food. CNN reports researchers found junk food is more appealing to people
who haven’t had their beauty sleep.
“Apparently your neurons act differently when you’re tired and give your brain more
of a reward for bad food choices.”
Researchers at Columbia University took 25 volunteers and tested the amount of blood
flow to their brains after a normal night’s sleep of about eight hours — and then with
subjects who had just four hours of sleep. KGW reports:
“Experts say the sleep deprived people registered lots of activity in the rewards center of
the brain when they looked at pictures of junk food.”
Those pictures were of things like cake and pizza. A dietician told Healthday the results
of the study aren’t surprising.
"It makes sense that when you are fatigued, your body would want calorie-dense foods that
give you quick energy ... In an evolutionary sense, doing so would provide an advantage
because you do get a momentary lift when you eat."
Healthday also reports sleep will provide more energy throughout the day than a short
burst from food. A blogger for Ology.com reports the study’s results don’t bode well for
the sleep-deprived.
“If we can't make decent decisions about food when running on less than nine hours
of sleep... how did I manage to dress myself in college?”
TIME Magazine reports researchers presented the study at an annual sleep research conference
in Boston over the weekend.