Less Sleep Linked to Weight Gain (Jialat!)

... so if I stay up to late night supper I put on DOUBLE the weight?!? Jialat; How can!!!!

Less Sleep Linked to Weight Gain
Source: American
Thoracic Society (ATS)


Women who sleep 5 hours or less per night weigh more on average than
those who sleep 7 hours, according to a study to be presented at the American
Thoracic Society International Conference on May 23rd. Press Briefing10:15 a.m.
(PDT).


Newswise — Women who sleep 5 hours or less per night weigh more on average
than those who sleep 7 hours, according to a study to be presented at the
American Thoracic Society International Conference on May 23rd.


The study found that women who slept for 5 hours per night were 32% more
likely to experience major weight gain (defined as an increase of 33 pounds or
more) and 15% more likely to become obese over the course of the 16-year study
compared with women who slept 7 hours. Women who slept for 6 hours were 12% more
likely to have major weight gain and 6% more likely to become obese compared
with women who slept 7 hours a night.
The study included 68,183 middle-aged
women who were enrolled in the Nurses Health Study. They were asked in 1986
about their typical night’s sleep, and were then asked to report their weight
every 2 years for 16 years.


On average, women who slept 5 hours or less per night weighed 5.4 pounds
more at the beginning of the study than those sleeping 7 hours and gained an
additional 1.6 pounds more over the next 10 years.“That may not sound like much,
but it is an average amount—some women gained much more than that, and even a
small difference in weight can increase a person’s risk of health problems such
as diabetes and hypertension,” said lead researcher Sanjay Patel, M.D.,
Assistant Professor of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland,
OH.
Dr. Patel noted that this is by far the largest study to track the effect
of sleep habits on weight gain over time. “There have been a number of studies
that have shown that at one point in time, people who sleep less weigh more, but
this is one of the first studies to show reduced sleep increases the risk of
gaining weight over time.”


The researchers looked at the women’s diets and exercise habits to see if
they could account for part of the findings. “Prior studies have shown that
after just a few days of sleep restriction, the hormones that control appetite
cause people to become hungrier, so we thought that women who slept less might
eat more. But in fact they ate less,” Dr. Patel said. “That suggests that
appetite and diet are not accounting for the weight gain in women who sleep
less.”
The researchers also asked women about how much they participated in
exercise activities such as running, jogging or playing tennis. But they didn’t
find any differences in physical activity that could explain why women who slept
less weighed more.


“We don’t have an answer from this study about why reduced sleep causes
weight gain, but there are some possibilities that deserve further study,” Dr.
Patel said. “Sleeping less may affect changes in a person’s basal metabolic rate
(the number of calories you burn when you rest). Another contributor to weight
regulation that has recently been discovered is called non-exercise associated
thermogenesis, or NEAT, which refers to involuntary activity, such as fidgeting
or standing instead of sitting. It may be that if you sleep less, you move
around less, too, and therefore burn up fewer calories.”