Craving crappy junk food? A good night’s sleep is all you need

We all love a good sleep, we think about heading back to our cosy beds for much of the day... No? Just us then.

Sometimes the side effects of a bad night's sleep are LITERALLY all over our face. Those tell-tale bags under our eyes which make people ask if we're ok, the grogginess when we don't exactly know if we're coming or going, and that general grey shade we all turn when all didn't get enough shut-eye. Well, it turns out not getting enough sleep can not only leave you exhausted it could see you reaching for junk food instead of a healthy salad. According to Readers Digest, research presented at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society’s annual meeting in San Francisco in 2017 showed that "sleep deprivation actually increases the brain’s sensitivity to food smell".

WHAT?!

Yes folks, that's right... if we don't get enough sleep our brains are more sensitive to all the bad stuff. Swell. The preliminary study carried out by Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago revealed the following;

"Participants who slept only four hours showed greater brain activity in response to food smells, like potato chips and doughnuts, compared to when they’d slept a full eight hours"

The studies are at a relatively early stage and are continuing,  but this is not the best news for those of us who run on 5/6 hours a night. Let's add it to the list of reasons why sleep is so important and why we love it so much. Now excuse us... we're going back to bed.