Sudhakar Jha
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Written By: Sudhakar Jha | Published : September 18, 2018 7:31 PM IST
Healthy adults and older people should get at least 7 to 9 hours of sleep per night. © Shutterstock
Sleep really doesn t even come to mind when we think about burning calories, but your body does it nonetheless. In fact, previous studies have shown that the brain needs 20 per cent of your daily calorie intake, and it continues to use it even when you're asleep.
Experts believe that there is no exact count to tell about the calories burnt, as it is highly variable throughout the sleep stages, and is based on the person s daytime activities and genetics too.
Having said that, there is a good baseline to determine how many calories you've burned. Basically, it comes down to a simple mathematic calculation.
You need to start with the number of calories your body burns at rest (called Basal Metabolic Rate). The BMR varies on mass, height, and age, but on average, your body burns about 45 calories per hour.
Experts say that BMR is measured after 8 hours of sleep, in a fasted state, and in neutral temperature conditions, so that one is truly measuring how much energy is being used to simply rest.
It is said that during sleep, the body functions at about 95 per cent of what it does at simple rest. So, if you can find an average caloric expenditure for an individual at rest (e.g. 45 calories/hour), you can calculate nocturnal calories burned by this equation:
Here s how to do it: Calories burned x .95 x hours slept
According to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, If you're truly looking to maximise the amount of calories you burn during sleep, you should turn the room temperature down.
To sum it up, keep your bedroom cool and dark, and you get that recommended 7-9 hours of sleep every night, to see your body burn few hundred calories even when you are sleeping.
