According to a study carried out in South Korea, sleeping in on the weekends to catch up on lost sleep may help to lower one’s body weight. How, you wonder? Actually, for a long time, it has been known that sleep has many benefits. However, not weight loss. But today, the secret is out. Sleep more and lose more weight.

Lack of sleep causes hormonal disruptions

Researchers in the journal Sleep say lack of enough sleep leads to disruption of hormones and metabolism and may increase the risk for obesity. If the metabolism is disrupted, the body will not break down much of the fat reserves as it should.

Dr.Chang-Ho Yun from Seoul National University said that sleeping less can lead to high blood pressure, obesity and heart diseases. This means that if people slept in more often, the lesser the people would feel the need for first aid certification just because there are many cases of such problems.

Dr. Yun adds that sleeping in is better than napping since it is deeper and follows the body’s sleeping patterns more closely.

There was a nationwide survey of more than two thousand people from all age groups to determine the relationship of sleeping in and body weight.

Researchers found out about peoples’ medical history, their weight and height, how they slept and their mood using interviews.

The team used the collected details to determine BMI, whether the people actually slept more on weekends, and a measure of their weight compared to their height.

Sleeping in on the weekends was considered when one slept more hours during the weekend than during the weekdays. On average, the participants had enough sleep and had BMIs that fell around 23, which is actually healthy.

Around 43 percent of the participants slept lesser on weekdays than they did on weekends by almost two hours. Participants who caught up on lost sleep in the weekends slept lesser hours during weekdays but slept more overall across the week.

The study showed that those who slept in had lower BMIs than those that did not although the difference was small. It also showed that the more one slept in, the lesser the BMI one had.

Jean-Phillipe Chaput of the University of Ottawa in Canada wasn’t involved in the study but added that people who sleep less eat more, snack more, watch a lot of television and may not move a lot due to fatigue.

Daily exercise ensures sound sleep

He stated that exercising daily helps improve sleep. He also said that experts say the use of an alarm clock indicates too much short sleeping. In addition, he emphasizes that the good habits that people need to adopt for daily use in order to improve health and avoid diseases include sleep.

If you are too busy with work on weekdays, sleep-in on weekends in order to get enough sleep. Yun said that sleeping-in is basically catching up on the lost sleep on the weekdays. However, Yun says that if your weekdays sleeping hours are too low not even sleeping in can help.