Less is More…Pounds on the Scale
It is no secret that people need sleep in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle. This is something that researchers have been studying for years. However, some people don’t realize just how much sleep affects the body. A recent study has shown that the later that you decide to fall asleep, the more weight you will end up gaining. This was not a surprise to the researchers; they had figured that there would be some weight gain. The surprise was how much the subject’s weight would increase, the later they went to sleep. They saw a 2.1 point increase in the subject’s body mass index (BMI) per hour that they pushed off sleep. Talk about a big risk for staying up late.
The Study
University of California, Berkeley worked on this study and used the data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. This longitudinal study has been tracking American teen patterns for 21 years, with a total of about 3,300 teens participating in the study. Specifically they concentrated on the beginning of the pubescent stage, college, and the transitioning adult years. They concentrated on how late they went to sleep as they main factor, and then also took a look at other possible factors that could have led to the weight gain. This included if they exercised, how much time they were spending watching television, and what they ate. The only one that had any effect on weight gain was the food that they ate. It was found that the later they stayed up, the more likely they were to eat fast, unhealthy food. This would cause a weight gain added on to what they gained by staying up late.
Lesson learned: We need to sleep more
The conclusion to the study was that not only should we be sleeping more, but we should be going to bed earlier. If people, particularly adolescents, start going to bed earlier, they are more likely to wake up on time, eat healthier, and have a lower BMI overall. Just make sure you turn off those screens at least an hour before you go to sleep, because that also affects the quality of your sleep.
