Our World is Facing an Obesity Epidemia

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It is often said that our world today is facing an “obesity epidemic”, but is it ever said that instead we are facing a sleep deprivation epidemic? Anne Stein’s article, “Not Enough ZZZZZZ’s?” written for the Orlando Sentinel, supports her claim that sleep deprivation leads to weight gain in both children and adults by using recent studies in sleep research. She first supports her claim by showing the relation between sleep deprivation and obesity from the 1960s to the present, then the alteration of hormone levels when one is sleep deprived, and finally she provides statistics between the number of sleep deprived children and obese children. Stein effectively shows that sleep derivation can and will lead to weight gain in order to convince the reader to value the importance of sleep.
As Stein proved in her article, sleep and weight are bound together through the regulation of the body’s hormone levels, so when sleep is restricted, hormone levels become altered. The hormone ghrelin, which tell the brain that the body is hungry, increases by 28%; while the hormone leptin, which tells the brain that the body has eaten enough, decreases by 18%. According to Dr. Michael Decker, adults sleeping less than six hours a night, even when exercising and eating right, increase their likeliness for being overweight or obese(Stein 2).
Children are not safe from the effects of sleep loss either. In a study of 8,234 children it was discovered that the chances of becoming obese for those obtaining less than ten and a half hours of sleep increased by 50% (Stein 2). Some researchers suggest that this lack of sleep is due to video games, school bus routes, or a parent’s early work schedule. Another study shows that 58% of ob...

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...e a proper, healthy level of sleep. Twelve to fifteen hours is suggested for ages one to three, eleven to thirteen hours for ages three to five, nine to eleven hours for ages five to twelve, nine to ten hours for adolescents, and at least seven to eight hours for adults (Wasowicz 17). A survey of 71 sleep specialists was conducted to collect tips on how to fall asleep and stay asleep. Some of these tips include: avoiding caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol, which suppress deep sleep, within three to six hours of going to bed; avoiding heavy meals within three hours before going to bed; snack on bananas, turkey, peanut butter, and other food that are rich in tryptophan, which produces a natural sedative; putting work aside two to three hours before going to bed; keeping the room quiet, dark, and cool; and dimming the lights two to three hours before bedtime(Wasowicz 3).

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