Stop those sleepless nights, you try to relax sleep well and avoid weight gain, that's the message from a recently published study. This study has found that women who sleep 5 hours or less weigh more compared to those women who sleep 7 hours. This study was presented in the American Thoracic Society International conference in May 2006.

This study showed that women who sleep 5 hours or less per day were 32 percent more at risk of developing significant weight gain compared to women who sleep for 7 hours per day. The criteria for significant weight gain mentioned above was a gain in weight of 33 pounds or more. The study also showed that women who sleep 5 hours or less have 15 percent higher risk of becoming obese during the study period of 16 years, compared to women who sleep more. Women who had only 6 hours of sleep per day, had twelve percent increased risk of major weight gain and 6% increased risk of obesity when compared to women who regularly get 7 hours of sleep.

These results are from a large study, comprising of a total of 68,183 middle-aged women, who were part of the Nurses health study. The study participants were required to state their sleeping habits and asked to report their weights every couple of years of years during the 16 years of the study. It was noted that at the beginning of the study women who slept 5 hours or less per day on an average had 5.4 extra pounds in their body in comparison to women who had 7 hours of sleep on a regular basis. The lead investigator of the study, Sanjay Patel MD, who an Associate Professor of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University located in Cleveland, Ohio, says that this is the largest study of sleep habits and weight gain. He says that, this is the first study to show that reduced sleeping is associated with increased risk of weight gain over a long period of time.

During the course of the study researchers tried to analyze if differences in dietary habits and physical activity had contributed to the weight gain seen in women who had less sleep. Researchers found that those who are deprived of sleep are actually eating less compared to women who had good seven hours of sleep. The research questionnaire tracked the physical activity patterns of women who participated in the study, but the analysis did not show any statically significant variations in the physical activity patterns between women who slept less and women who slept more. The weight gain in women who sleep less is not explained by eating more or having lesser physical activity. It is possible that women who sleep less may be moving around less outside the setting of planned exercise programs and may be thus burning lesser calories compared to women who sleep more. However researchers agree that further research is needed to determine what causes weight gain in women who sleep 5 hours or less.

From: American Thoracic Society

---