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Why You Make Worse Food Choices When You're Tired | Dr. Marie-Pierre St-Onge & Dr. Andrew Huberman

Huberman Lab Clips07:28Added Aug 31, 2026

Dr. Marie-Pierre St-Onge and Dr. Andrew Huberman discuss the impact of sleep restriction on metabolic health and weight gain, highlighting how losing just 90...

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Contributed by 刘嘉琪

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  1. Sleep Loss & Overeating

  2. 00:00I think there's some subconscious need
  3. 00:02to to eat more when you're sleepd
  4. 00:05deprived. There's also, you know,
  5. 00:07there's a thermic effect of of food,
  6. 00:09right? So, it gives you a jolt of energy
  7. 00:10to eat something. People know that you
  8. 00:13eat it wakes you up in a way. You know,
  9. 00:16neuronal signaling that that enhances uh
  10. 00:21pleasurable and reward centers of the
  11. 00:23brain where you know when also fatigue
  12. 00:26sits in and now it's like do you really
  13. 00:28want to have this conversation with
  14. 00:30yourself about what to choose at the
  15. 00:32buffet table? you know, there's fatigue
  16. 00:36and uh and others have shown also that
  17. 00:39sleepiness tends to correlate with all
  18. 00:42of this that there's these triggers for
  19. 00:45more pleasurable food consumption with
  20. 00:48um with sleep restriction and it's been
  21. 00:50reproduced. There's been so many studies
  22. 00:52uh and they all you know agree to to the
  23. 00:56extent of overeating you know a meta
  24. 00:58analysis showed 250 to 400 calories of
  25. 01:02overeating
  26. 01:03which might not sound like much but when
  27. 01:04you start layering that in day after day
  28. 01:06and you think you know 3500 excess
  29. 01:09calories more or less for a pound of
  30. 01:11body weight and then you start when
  31. 01:12people accumulate that over time
  32. 01:14if they're in a night shift condition or
  33. 01:17new parents or tending to a sick
  34. 01:19relative were just final exams like it
  35. 01:22it's a real thing.
  36. 01:23It's a real thing. Uh Neymar Kovson in
  37. 01:25uh 2022 published a paper where uh they
  38. 01:29had sleep restriction about 5 hours per
  39. 01:31night versus 7 and 1 half hours per
  40. 01:34night for two weeks and participants
  41. 01:36gained half a kilo in a twoe period. So
  42. 01:39you do nothing and you just you know
  43. 01:41sleep less and gain gain almost a pound
  44. 01:45in two weeks. It strikes me that, you
  45. 01:47know, for a long time in the stress
  46. 01:49research, the idea was when people are
  47. 01:51stressed, they reach for kind of quote
  48. 01:52unquote comfort foods, carbohydrate, and
  49. 01:55typically starch fat, starch fat, sugar
  50. 01:58combination foods to comfort them. And

  51. Role of Cortisol

  52. 02:00and the the just so story was always
  53. 02:02that uh okay, well, you know, cortisol's
  54. 02:05main role is to deploy glucose and so
  55. 02:07people are doing this as a way to bring
  56. 02:09excess energy and and it all kind of
  57. 02:11fits together. What is the relationship
  58. 02:14between these forms of sleep deprivation
  59. 02:15that you work on and stress? Is it
  60. 02:18really a way of of I'm not saying just
  61. 02:20inducing stress because I think sleep is
  62. 02:21its own thing, but it's stressful
  63. 02:24just to be less than adequately rested
  64. 02:27independent of the things coming at you
  65. 02:29in life,
  66. 02:29right? Is what you're studying stress.
  67. 02:32So if you're thinking about
  68. 02:33physiological stress measured by
  69. 02:35cortisol levels in that study, actually
  70. 02:37cortisol wasn't changed
  71. 02:39in the short sleep. in the short sleep.
  72. 02:41Tell me more about that. I'm fascinated
  73. 02:43by circadian rhythms and cortisol. So,
  74. 02:45what does what does that what does that
  75. 02:46mean?
  76. 02:47There was no difference between the two
  77. 02:48conditions, the adequate sleep or short
  78. 02:50sleep on cortisol levels
  79. 02:52for 5 days of sleep restriction at
  80. 02:54basically 4 hours a night.
  81. 02:55So, cortisol is still peaking at in the
  82. 02:57in the morning, still dropping in the
  83. 02:59evening.
  84. 03:00Yeah.
  85. 03:01Wow. That's very surprising to me.
  86. 03:03I don't know I don't know if it's the
  87. 03:04context of you know being in a lab where
  88. 03:08everything's safe taken care of for them
  89. 03:11there's nothing outside to aggravate
  90. 03:15this so I don't know maybe when you're
  91. 03:17in the context of sleep restriction but
  92. 03:20also dealing with your daily life
  93. 03:24you needing to take care of your kids
  94. 03:26needing to get to work needing to do all
  95. 03:28the activities of daily living maybe
  96. 03:30then that becomes you know the the added
  97. 03:33stressful Oh,
  98. 03:34so the message is if you suffer less
  99. 03:38than adequate sleep, get someone to take
  100. 03:40care of everything else. You better be
  101. 03:42in a spa. Exactly. Exactly. No, I and
  102. 03:45I'm not challenging the result. I just
  103. 03:46find it really interesting. I would have
  104. 03:48thought that basil cortisol levels would
  105. 03:49would go ary.
  106. 03:50Well, in that study also, we didn't see
  107. 03:52any effect on glucose or insulin.
  108. 03:55Nothing. Nothing. The curves were
  109. 03:59superimposable.
  110. 04:01while
  111. 04:02they were eating the exact same food at
  112. 04:05the exact same time, exact same
  113. 04:08quantity. The only thing we changed was
  114. 04:11the amount of sleep opportunity they got
  115. 04:13at night. So to me, this means that it's

  116. Metabolic Impacts in Daily Life

  117. 04:16a combination of different things that
  118. 04:18causes the metabolic abnormalities that
  119. 04:20we notice in free living populations.
  120. 04:23People aren't isolated. They're not in a
  121. 04:25box where they're not sleeping enough
  122. 04:28and they're choosing to eat higher fat,
  123. 04:31higher sugar, higher salt, poor diet
  124. 04:36that then triggers a worsening and may
  125. 04:39be compounded by the lack of sleep, even
  126. 04:42worsening of of those cardioabolic
  127. 04:45outcomes because we did a follow-up
  128. 04:47study to this uh this severe sleep
  129. 04:49restriction study. So the reason why we
  130. 04:51did that was because exactly for this
  131. 04:53reason because we did not find any
  132. 04:56adverse impact on glucose or insulin or
  133. 04:59lipid profile. And we're like so what is
  134. 05:02it then? Why is it that in population
  135. 05:04based studies we find that people who
  136. 05:07sleep too little have higher risk of
  137. 05:11cardiovascular disease, higher risk of
  138. 05:12hypertension, higher blood pressure,
  139. 05:14higher uh risk of type two diabetes. So,
  140. 05:18because we had seen that food choices
  141. 05:21were different, that they ate a diet
  142. 05:23that was higher in calories, higher uh
  143. 05:26in fat and saturated fat, we thought
  144. 05:28maybe if you're in a free living
  145. 05:30situation,
  146. 05:32that's when you start to see those
  147. 05:34cardio metabolic outcomes because it's
  148. 05:36compounded by maybe uh more sedentary
  149. 05:39behavior and alterations in in uh food
  150. 05:44choices and and diet.
  151. 05:46So the follow-up study then was to
  152. 05:49recruit good sleepers, people who sleep
  153. 05:52at least seven hours per night, verified
  154. 05:54by ecttoraphy, who answer on
  155. 05:56questionnaires that their sleep quality
  156. 05:59is good. And then to take these people
  157. 06:02and say, "Okay, now you're either going
  158. 06:05to continue your excellent sleep or
  159. 06:11you're going to now go to bed an hour
  160. 06:14and a half later so that you get an hour
  161. 06:16and a half reduction in sleep." Because
  162. 06:18when we screen people to sleep at least
  163. 06:217 hours per night, they sleep about 7
  164. 06:23and 1/2. and reducing by an hour and a
  165. 06:26half gets to 6 hours which is short
  166. 06:29sleep insufficient
  167. 06:31on average what people who don't get
  168. 06:33enough sleep get
  169. 06:34they're missing a full sleep cycle

  170. Long Term Health Consequences

  171. 06:36yeah pretty much and uh and they can
  172. 06:39sustain that for prolonged periods
  173. 06:41because that's what people report in in
  174. 06:44population based studies and now when we
  175. 06:46did that we saw that insulin resistance
  176. 06:50was increased after 6 weeks of sleep
  177. 06:54restrict iction compared to adequate
  178. 06:55sleep. We saw insulin sensitivity was
  179. 06:58reduced. It was worse actually in
  180. 07:01post-menopausal women compared to
  181. 07:03premenopausal women. We saw blood
  182. 07:05pressure uh was increased. Uh so those
  183. 07:08cardabolic outcomes were adversely
  184. 07:10impacted in freel mild sustained sleep
  185. 07:14restriction for 6 weeks. 6 weeks was
  186. 07:17something else also. It was it was
  187. 07:20tough.