Sleep and Hormones: The Deprivation Study

[01dragonslayer]

The Body Composition Destroyer

How does terrible sleep affect testosterone, cortisol, and muscle protein synthesis? It's even worse than you think. Luckily, it's fixable.​

Question: What's the best way to torture a person without causing them obvious physical harm? It's easy: deprive them of sleep. The technique was used to extract the confessions from "witches" in the 16th and 17th centuries. The Nazis used it. The Soviets and Chinese Communists were fans. America used it post-9/11.

Another Question: What's the best way to make someone less muscular and fatter without barring them from the gym and force-feeding them Lucky Charms? Answer: also sleep deprivation. Call it a non-violent body composition destroyer.

Here's what we know from past research:

• Inadequate sleep lowers testosterone levels.
• If you don't sleep enough while dieting, much of the weight you lose comes from muscle, not fat.
• When short sleepers (5 to 7 hours per night) start getting around 8 hours, they naturally crave less sugar and junk foods, leading to slow and steady fat loss.

In the study below, researchers wanted to look at sleep as it relates to muscle protein synthesis, testosterone, IGF-1, and cortisol. What happens when you get little to no sleep for just a single night?


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The Study​

Thirteen men and women were divided into two groups:

• Sleep Deprivation Group
• Normal Sleep Group

The sleep-deprived group stayed in the lab overnight and were kept awake the whole time. The normal sleepers, well, slept normally. The subjects wore sleep monitors, blood was drawn multiple times, and muscle biopsies were taken.

What Happened?​

• Muscle Protein Synthesis: MPS was 18% lower on average for the non-sleepers. Remember, muscle protein synthesis is the anabolic environment you want to build muscle. Interestingly, all the male subjects experienced this drop, but the female subjects didn't.
• Testosterone: T levels were 24% lower on average. But again, while all the men experienced this dip, the women didn't. Dr. Bill Campbell, in his breakdown of this study in his Body by Science newsletter, says this isn't surprising since women don't have as much circulating testosterone, so "… there wasn't much of a threshold level from which to decrease."
• Insulin-like Growth Factor 1 (IGF-1): Not impacted.
• Cortisol: This part gets tricky. The normal sleepers saw an increase in cortisol in the morning. But that's normal. A natural cortisol rise at the end of your sleep cycle is healthy; it wakes you up. The sleep-deprived group didn't experience much of this natural cortisol bump. Instead, their cortisol levels shot up from 10 AM to 4 PM. This amounts to a catabolic environment for both men and women.

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How to Use This Info​

You're probably not pulling many all-nighters, but 35% of US adults sleep less than seven hours per night. Although the study above used an extreme approach (zero sleep), the same negative effects occur when we string together too many nights of crappy sleep. Obviously, lower MPS, squashed testosterone, and inappropriately timed cortisol spikes don't do a body good, especially a male body.

You've heard all the usual sleep hygiene tips before, so let's dig deeper into what causes poor sleep. Two overlooked factors:

1. Magnesium Deficiency​

Magnesium is involved in melatonin synthesis, helping you maintain a regular circadian rhythm. A deficiency disrupts melatonin production, so you have trouble falling or staying asleep. Magnesium also calms the nervous system by regulating GABA, a neurotransmitter that inhibits nerve excitability and helps you chill out. The mineral also manages cortisol and keeps it tamped down at night when it should be low.

Most people these days are at least a little magnesium deficient. To correct this problem, take 400 mg around 30 minutes before bed. The Albion-chelated form is the most absorbable.

2. Omega-3 Deficiency​

A lack of EPA and especially DHA wrecks sleep in several ways. Like magnesium, DHA is involved in the synthesis of melatonin, but also in serotonin regulation. (Low serotonin results in insomnia and anxiety.) Omega-3s also influence your body's stress response by regulating the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, which controls cortisol release.