The Guardian’s Science Weekly Podcast has an interesting episode called “The science of sleep and circadian rhythms”.
They cover
- the development of the research into the Circadian rhythm
- what genes and parts of the brain are involved
- how light sets the master clock in your body and and influences your sleep.
- influence on hormones such as testosterone and estrogen
- how im portant sleep is to coming up with solutions to tasks
- why the body clock doesn’t adapt to night shifts
- how sleep will enhance our ability to come up with novel solutions to complex tasks
- influence of sleep deprivation on health
They talk about one particular study that monitored the impact of sleep deprivation on the metabolism.
One group got to sleep only 4 hours a night, while the other was allowed 10+ hours of sleep.
After just 7 days they found that:
- on the 4 hours of sleep per night group, grehlin (hunger hormone) levels were up 28%
- leptin levels had fallen 17%
- carbohydrate consumption went up 35-40%.
- their ability to clear glucose from the bloodstream was borderline diabetic
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