Lack of sleep makes your brain crave junk food.
Researchers from St. Luke's – Roosevelt Hospital Center and Columbia University in New York performed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) on 25 men and women of normal weights while they looked at images of healthy and unhealthy foods.
The sight of unhealthy food during a period of sleep restriction activated reward centers in the brain that were less active when participants had adequate sleep.
Previous research has shown that restricted sleep leads to increased food consumption in healthy people, and that a self-reported desire for sweet and salty food increases after a period of sleep deprivation.
Food intake data from this same study showed that participants ate more overall and consumed more fat after a period of sleep restriction compared to regular sleep. The brain imaging data provided the neurocognitive basis for those results.
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