Study: One Night of Total Sleep Deprivation Could Equal Months on High-Fat Diet | Hacker News Reader

Study: One Night of Total Sleep Deprivation Could Equal Months on High-Fat Diet

obesity.org

24 pointsbootload23 comments

The title says "one night of poor sleep", but the quote in the article says "one night of total sleep deprivation". I often have nights of poor sleep. I never have nights of total sleep deprivation. Title is misleading.

Another interesting study destroyed by its PR. When will the madness end? I seriously doubt the two effects are "equal", either; could it be that getting a better night's sleep or two removes the effect of a bad night of sleep, whereas six months of diet can't be removed in a couple of days? Just because two elements of an n-dimensional tuple are equal does not mean you've got two equal values. This study, at least, doesn't appear to address that question at all. (Which is fine! That's just a factual statement, not a criticism. Though I do hope having spent 6 months on feeding dogs they took the ~week to see about recovery times for the insulin sensitivity, perhaps for another paper.)

I'm really curious to see if the negative effects of a night of sleep deprivation/poor sleep could be offset by some naptime in the day.

Ok, we changed the title to match your description.

You cannot, in any way, say that these two scenarios are equal from this study alone. While the study tested insulin resistance after 1 night of sleep deprivation and in a separate of animals after 6 months of a high fat diet, they are only point in time measurements. How quickly does the body rebound from the sleep deprived drop? After 1 good sleep? After a week? How long does the resistance last after eating a high fat diet for 6 months? After 1 meal? After a week? After 6 more months? Does 1 night of sleep deprived night lead to the same number of dogs developing diabetes as those fed the diet for 6 months? So much sensationalizing...

I'm flagging this post. High fat diets are not proven to be detrimental to your health, and science is proving that the low fat fad diets that have been pushed by the FDA for years ARE detrimental to your health. The article is almost entirely bullshit.

> High fat diets are not proven to be detrimental to your health,

Do you believe this yourself?

Also, not to nitpick, but science does not "prove", it establishes plausible models for observed facts. There is no end to studies linking poor diet to poor health.

I'm skeptical about making broad assumptions about human applicability in this study, too, but that hardly makes it flagworthy. They've identified specific chemical pathways as a metric for concern; let's see if human effects are parallel.

And I'm a longtime low-carber with as much as 15 continuous months on a KD, so I'm not a KD skeptic.

Being overweight has been shown to cause insulin resistance, which is what they were comparing.

Insulin resistance is driven by sugar, not fat. What are these guys talking about?

That's what I thought (part time ketoer here) but not the case. I googled it just now and educated myself a bit more... It comes down to the cell membranes and the amount of fat in the blood stream. All news to me.

"saturated fat significantly worsen insulin-resistance, while monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids improve it through modifications in the composition of cell membranes which reflect at least in part dietary fat composition"[0]

"Fat in the bloodstream can build up inside the muscle cell and create toxic fatty breakdown products and free radicals that can block the insulin signaling process. When that happens, no matter how much insulin we have in our blood, it won’t be able to open the glucose gates." [1]

So it's interesting to me, then, that the crux of what Tim Ferris says is accurate in a different light- the fat seems to clog the insulin response from the cells (including fat cells) which would lead me to believe that's beneficial in some way to stop the addition of sugar to fat cells. IANADr tho.

[0] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15297079

[1] http://www.forksoverknives.com/fat-insulin-resistance-blood-...

Edit: Just found this one too... very interesting

"In conclusion, the present study shows that a high-fat KD causes hepatic insulin resistance in mice, which can be attributed to an increase in hepatic DAG content, leading to PKCε activation and subsequent impaired insulin signaling. Moreover, this study found that a KD increases energy expenditure, which results in weight loss. Given the widespread use of KD in the treatment of obesity and the role of NAFLD and hepatic insulin resistance in promoting type 2 diabetes, these results may have important clinical implications, as obese patients on such diets could lose weight but develop NAFLD and hepatic insulin resistance."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2980360/

Really interesting stuff, but a couple of notes about applicability to humans: "It should be mentioned that the KD used in this study, as well as in other studies in mice (2–4, 25), may differ from KD used in humans. Indeed, this KD contains almost no carbohydrate and the protein proportion is low, whereas KD used in humans usually contain less fat, more protein, and also more carbohydrate."

IOW, the diet is an artificial construct not resembling any occurrence in nature. Artificially low protein in a KD sounds just dangerous, as adequate dietary protein will produce any needed blood glucose via gluconeogenesis, keeping those pathways active in a more natural sense.

2) note the second paragraph in Discussion where they discuss effects of BAT (Brown Adipose Tissue aka "brown fat"). BAT is present in significantly higher %age in mice vs humans.

3) later that paragraph: "most studies have found that weight loss improves insulin sensitivity in humans (41) and mice (36)." Well, we have kind of an impasse, then -- were those studies' KDs more realistic in terms of macronutrient ratios?

I started to read the first article, but I got confused, so I watched the video. The latter is probably a poor substitute for the former, but assuming the video is accurate (as well as my understanding of it):

Insulin sensitivity seems to recover once the high-fat diet has been curtailed. That makes it a bit different from the usual course of insulin resistance, no?

Along the same lines, it seems to me that a LCHF (low carb, high fat) diet may solve its own problems. What I mean is that while the body may be slow to respond to blood sugar spikes, that situation should be occurring infrequently, if ever.

On the other hand, it makes me wonder if "part-time keto" may be worse than the alternatives. In a situation where you switch from keto to...whatever, I picture fat-laden cells unable to deal with the sudden onslaught of sugar.

the [0] article makes a distinction between saturated fat vs unsaturated fat while the [1] article and the last article cited do not. isn't this the big difference?

Actually, you can not eliminate the effects of 6 months on a high fat diet by sleeping more as the title implied. At best you can just make your insulin marginally better.

Hmm, when I'm very tired I get slight tingling sensations in my feet sometimes. I wonder if that is (anecdotally of course) related to the insulin sensitivity. I've heard that is a symptom of diabetes.

Usually sleep fixes everything right back up. I'm pretty skinny, although I know that's not necessarily always an indicator of good health, I'm pretty sure I'm pretty healthy.

Subtitle: New study in canines examines the effect of sleep loss on insulin sensitivity

So, does it apply to humans?

Probably. We're very biologically similar. The sample size is probably a larger issue.

So I can eat whatever I want as long as I get a good night's sleep? Sold.

You should apply to write headlines for obesity.org. You've got what it takes.

They actually specify that there's no additive effect between the two. So I think the 'better' conclusion is that if your sleep is already poor then you can eat all the fat you want.

Oh, wow, a study on 8 canines. I'M CONVINCED, OBESITY.ORG. This surely does not look like an attempt to use a study to draw an unrelated conclusion in a sensationalist title.

Keep these conference abstracts away from the media. Just because some grad student says something on a poster does not make it even close to probably correct.

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