Obesity: The Health Epidemic

545 Words2 Pages

Sleep loss is not a major cause, but it still counts. “Sleep loss itself leads people to expend more energy because the body needs more to keep itself awake.” Keeping one’s body awake longer than they should is very harmful, in more ways than one. When you are awake, you feel obligated to satisfy your needs of hunger or thirst. With all that excess food and / or drink and one not burning it off actually turns to fat faster than normal, which causes weight gain. In a study Kenneth Wright did, he says “On top of that, when people weren’t obtaining enough sleep they ate smaller breakfasts because their bodies thought they were still supposed to be sleeping” (“Koebler”). Breakfast, despite what you think, is actually the most important meal of the day. It is what gives one the energy to get through the day, and without it, it might be hard to stay awake of be active. Also, being sleep deprived for just one week causes people to overeat which without exercise leads to gaining weight. Sleeping not only gives the body a chance to rest, but it actually helps one burn calories. “A lack of energy balance most often causes obesity. Energy balance means that one’s energy IN equals one’s energy OUT” (“What”). Lacking in the sleep department means one’s energy IN does not equal one’s energy OUT, for the reason that less sleep means more food and drink intake, and less energy because one lost sleep. These days’ teens think it is cool to stay up all hours of the night, but really in reality people are harming themselves in many ways.
Not getting enough sleep is already not good for one due to lack of energy. It only gets worse from there. The more sleep one takes away from one’s body the more harm they are doing. “Poor sleep contribut...

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