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Aging News for Senior Citizens
Older Women Who Sleep Least Gain Most Weight
Appetite and diet not accounting for weight gain in
women who sleep less
May 23, 2006 - Women who sleep 5 hours or less per
night weigh more on average than those who sleep 7 hours, according to a
study of middle-aged women to be presented at the American Thoracic
Society International Conference today.
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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."
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