Health Gem

If you do one thing this week . . . get enough sleep, to help food choices

WE ALL know that getting enough sleep is important for feeling good, but could it also influence the decisions you make about what to eat?

The findings, presented in Boston at Sleep 2012, the 26th annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies (APSS), used brain imaging technology to study what happened when participants rated how much they wanted various food items shown to them, either after a decent night’s sleep or after a night of sleep deprivation.

The results suggest that sleep deprivation impairs brain activity in a brain region called the frontal lobe, which is involved in making complex choices.

“These results shed light on how the brain becomes impaired by sleep deprivation, leading to improper food choices,” said researcher Stephanie Greer from the University of California, Berkeley.