LEPTIN: Appetite Regulator For Weight Watchers

Leptin (Greek leptos meaning thin) is a hormone released by your fat cells. When you are dieting or starving and lose fat, leptin levels drop. When you gain weight, levels rise. This hormone lets your brain know when you have consumed enough food or calories and should stop eating. It gives you a feeling of fullness and satisfaction after a meal.

Adequate sleep helps to maintain optimum levels of Leptin, so that you don't feel hungry before your body actually NEEDS to eat.

During sleep, melatonin interacts with insulin-stimulated leptin and causes a decrease in appetite.

both acute sleep deprivation and chronic partial sleep deprivation has a bad effect on leptin and interfere with your ability to know when to stop eating. Lack of sleep decreases leptin and increases ghrelin levels, (a hormone that stimulates appetite). Consequently, you end up feeling hungrier without really feeling satisfied by what you eat. The result is over eating and weight gain.

Leptin not only regulates your body weight but also blood cell development, white blood cell formation and immune function. It plays a central role in regulating energy intake and energy expenditure through fat metabolism and helps to control appetite and metabolism via the brain's hypothalamus. It also modulates the immune response to atherosclerosis (clogging and hardening of arteries), which is a predisposing factor in overweight people.

Interestingly, while sleep loss contributes to lower leptin levels, which increase appetite and energy levels, obese people have high leptin levels but are insensitive to this hormone [leptin resistance]. Therefore, although obese people have high levels of leptin, this hormone does not suppress their appetite due to insensitivity to the hormone.

Researchers are conducting studies on using leptin to treat type 1 diabetes. A March 2010 study on animals showed that mice with type 1 diabetes treated with leptin alone or in conjunction with insulin did better than a third group of diabetic mice treated with insulin alone. The first two groups of diabetic mice have blood sugar that did not fluctuate as much, their cholesterol levels went down and they did not form as much body fat.

Leptin also plays a role in innate and acquired immunity. Its level increases significantly to protect you when you have infection and inflammation. More important, leptin deficiency makes you more susceptible to infectious and inflammatory stimuli.

Leptin deficiency also causes a defect in maturation of blood cell and production of cytokine (messenger chemicals).

This hormone also plays a role in the Central Nervous System’s control of immune response. When we do not get enough sleep, the number of white blood cells within the body decreases, as does the activity of the remaining white blood cells.

Therefore, get adequate sleep so that you have enough leptin to control your weight better, fight inflammation and diseases as well as regulate metabolism more efficiently.