How to lose weight while you’re asleep

Nicole Curtis, special to wtop.com

WASHINGTON – Eight hours of sleep is essential for good health but there is another fact that you should know: lowering your thermostat while you are asleep might help you burn some fat.

A new study shows that cooler bedrooms could transform a person’s brown-fat or “good fat.” This could consequently alter energy expenditure and metabolic health while you are sleep and daylight hours.

The study, published in June in Diabetes, analyzed five healthy young men, who slept in climate-controlled chambers at the National Institute of Health for four months. The men maintained their normal lives during the day but returned to the institute at eight in the evening.

The researchers kept the bedrooms at 75-degrees for the first month and the bedrooms were cooled to 66-degrees for the second month. The researches predicted that this temperature would stimulate brown-fat activity.

The bedrooms were reset to 75-degrees to undo any effects from the cooler room and for the last month, the temperature was changed to 81-degrees.

The men’s blood-sugar, insulin levels and daily caloric expenditures were evaluated and the amount of brown fat was measured after each month.

After four weeks of sleeping at 66-degrees, the men had almost doubled their volumes of brown fat. The insulin sensitivity also improved.

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