You may be spending very few hours for sleep, now stop this and try to relax and avoid gaining weight, that's the message scientists have for you according to the findings from a recently published study. This interesting study shows that women who tend to sleep less, 5 hours or less, are more prone to weight gain in comparison to women who sleep 7 hours. Scientists presented this study in the recently held American Thoracic Society International conference during the later part of May 2006.

The study was interesting because it showed that women who get only 5 hours or less of sleep per day had 32% higher chance of having significant weight gain in comparison to women who get 7 hours of sleep. The definition of significant weight gain was a gain in weight amounting to 33 pounds ore more. The results of this study also indicated that women who get 5 hours of sleep or less have fifteen percent increased risk of developing obesity during the study period of 16 years, in comparison to women who get 7 hours of sleep. The group in between, who had only 6 hours of sleep per day, had 12 percent higher chance of developing major weight gain and 6 percent higher risk of developing obesity in comparison to women who get 7 hours of sleep per day.

These conclusions are drawn form a large study, which had 68,183 middle-aged women, who were enrolled in the Nurses health study. Women who took part in the study were mandatory to give information about their sleeping hours and were asked to report their weights every 2 years of years during the 16 years of the study. Even at the beginning of the study women who had 5 hours or less of sleep weighed on an average 5.4 pounds more on the scale in comparison to women who had 7 hours of sleep on a regular basis. The principle investigator of this study, Dr. Sanjay Patel, claims that this is the biggest study of its kind. Dr. Patel says that, this would be the first study to demonstrate that lack of sleep lead to weight gain over a long period of time.

When they found the difference in weight correlation to sleeping habits, the scientists tried to determine if the differences in food habits and exercise had contributed to the risk of weight gain in women who slept less. The findings from the study however suggest that those women who are sleeping less were actually having less appetite and were eating less in comparison to women who had good sleep. Scientists also enquired and analyzed the exercise and physical activity patterns of women in the study, but did not find any significant differences in the physical activity patterns between women who had less sleep in comparison to women who had more sleep. The research data showed that the weight gain in women who slept five hours or less is not the result of overeating or having lesser physical activity. Scientists think that women who are sleeping less might be more sedentary in their life habits outside the spectrum of planned physical activity and may be thus burning lesser calories in comparison to women who sleep more. Scientists suggest that more studies are needed to clearly understand the exact reason why women who sleep less gain weight.

Primary source: American Thoracic Society (ATS).

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