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Do you like sweets? You just need a good night's sleep!
Last reviewed: 02.07.2025
Scientists are sure that in order to reduce cravings for sweets, you need to increase the duration of your night's sleep.
Experts representing the Royal School in London claim that people who sleep enough at night eat fewer sweets during the day. Researchers conducted an experiment involving volunteers. The participants were divided into two groups. The first group was given recommendations on how to improve the quality and duration of sleep: in particular, the participants were not supposed to drink coffee in the afternoon, not to overeat at night, and not to starve. After this, the volunteers were sent home, having previously installed a special device on each of them that recorded the quality and duration of sleep.
Probably everyone knows that a person needs from seven to nine hours of sleep. But not everyone adheres to this norm, and most of the experiment participants are no exception. Volunteers from the first group, who received preliminary recommendations for improving sleep, slept more than other participants - by about 50-90 minutes. As scientists discovered, not only sleep and its duration changed, but also nutritional principles. Thus, those people who slept in the interval of the recommended 7-9 hours, in most cases refused sweets: their tea or coffee contained less sugar, they did not show a weakness for sweet buns and donuts.
Scientists calculated that normal sleep duration reduced daily habitual sugar consumption by approximately 10 g.
Of course, more research needs to be done to clarify this, involving a larger number of people. However, some conclusions can already be drawn - for example, those of us who want to lose a few extra pounds will clearly not ignore this news. It turns out that a good night's sleep helps to lose excess weight.
The experiment conducted by scientists is not the first study to reveal a connection between a lack of night sleep and an increased craving for weaknesses and other unhealthy food. Almost three years ago, the same specialists published information of the following plan: lack of sleep - especially systematic - leads to frequent overeating. And scientific representatives of the University of Chicago announced in the publication Sleep that one of the factors of improper nutrition is the production of endocannabinoids, which increases during periods of lack of sleep and forces a person to eat more food, while paying less attention to its quality. Endocannabinoids "work" with pleasure signals and stimulate a person to create a constant level of satisfaction in the structures of the nervous system. Therefore, against the background of lack of sleep, people eat things that they do not allow themselves in a normal state - for various reasons.
If all the information obtained during the experiments is confirmed, then the fight against obesity will become much easier.
Details of the project work are published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.