A 2004 review found that melatonin significantly increased total sleep time in people suffering from sleep restriction.
Surprisingly, by the end of the 14 days of sleep restriction, subjects in the 4- and 6-hour sleep period conditions reported feeling only slightly sleepy.
Few studies have compared the effects of acute total sleep deprivation and chronic partial sleep restriction.
Similar endocrine alterations have been shown to occur even after a single night of sleep restriction.
Recent studies show sleep restriction has some potential in the treatment of depression.
Recovery of cognitive function is accomplished more rapidly after acute total sleep deprivation than after chronic partial sleep restriction.
A component of stimulus control therapy is sleep restriction, a technique that aims to match the time spent in bed with actual time spent asleep.
This may be an issue for ghrelin, as levels increased with acute sleep restriction.
It is, however, unlikely to play a role in the leptin finding, since lower levels were found with chronic but not acute sleep restriction.
These changes can be hypothesized to play a contributory, rather than compensatory, role in the development of overweight and obesity with sleep restriction.