You may be spending very few hours for sleep, you try to relax sleep well and avoid weight gain, that's the message researchers have for you as per the findings from a recently published study. This interesting study has found that women who tend to sleep less, 5 hours or less, weigh more compared to those women who sleep 7 hours. Researchers presented this study in the American Thoracic Society International conference during the later part of May 2006.

The study was interesting because it showed that women who sleep 5 hours or less per day had 32% higher chance of having 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 results of this study also indicated that women who sleep 5 hours or less have fifteen percent increased risk of becoming obese during the 16 year study period, compared to women who sleep more. The group in between, who had only 6 hours of sleep per day, had twelve percent higher chance of developing major weight gain and 6% higher risk of developing obesity when compared to women who regularly get 7 hours of sleep.

These conclusions are from a large study, which had 68,183 middle-aged women, who were part of the Nurses health study. Women who participated in the study were required to state their sleeping habits and were asked to report their weights every couple of years of the span 16 years covered by the study. Even at the beginning of the study women who slept 5 hours or less per day weighed on an average 5.4 pounds more on the scale in comparison to women who had 7 hours of sleep. The principle investigator of this study, Sanjay Patel MD, who an Associate Professor of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University located in Cleveland, Ohio, claims that this is the biggest study of its kind. Dr. Patel says that, this is the first study to show that lack of sleep is associated with increased risk of weight gain over time.

When they found the difference in weight related to sleeping habits, the researchers tried to analyze if differences in food habits and physical activity contributed to the weight gain in women who slept less. The findings from the study however suggest that those who are deprived of sleep were actually having less appetite and were eating less compared to women who had good seven hours of sleep. Researchers also enquired and analyzed the physical activity patterns of women in the study, but the analysis did not show any statically significant variations in the exercise patterns between women who slept less and women who slept more. The research data showed that the weight gain in women who sleep less is not the result of eating more or decreased exercises. Researchers believe that women who sleep less might be more sedentary in their life habits outside the setting of planned exercise programs and may be burning less calories. Researchers suggest that further research is needed to clearly understand what causes weight gain in women who sleep 5 hours or less.

Source: American Thoracic Society (ATS)

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