Health

Do you know, less sleep could cause weight gain?

Do you have a weight problem? There may be several ways to overcome, such as the results of research developed by a study in the United States recently. It turns out, some more sleep could be one solutions to the problem of weight! The results showed that people who sleep less tend to have a weight problem.

"People who got very little sleep ate more but didn't burn any extra calories, the study in the Journal of Clinical Nutrition revealed.

Marie-Pierre St-Onge, from the New York Obesity Research Center at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital, who led the study says, "If you try to control your weight, then sleep will be one of the things that could help."

As quoted by the Straits Times, on Monday (7/11/2011), the National Institute of Health revealed, “Approximately 50 to 70 million US residents - including a significant number of shift workers - suffer from chronic sleep loss and sleep disorders”

Dr St-Onge and her colleagues recruited 30 men and women in their 30s and 40s, all of roughly normal weight. The participants lived and slept in a research centre during two different five-night periods.

During the first period, they were allowed to sleep for nine hours each night. During the other, they were only allowed four hours of shut-eye. Both times, they were fed a strict diet for the first four days of their stay and then were allowed to eat whatever they wanted on the fifth and final full day.

Tests showed that regardless of which sleep schedule they were on, people burned a similar amount of calories, about 2,600 per day. But when they were sleep-deprived, they fed themselves about 300 more calories on average on the final day of the study compared to when they had been sleeping normally. Well-rested participants ate an average of 2,500 calories that day, compared to 2,800 when they were running on less sleep.

Well, this could obviously lead to weight gain, so if you are a busy worker just have some more time for sleep between 8-9 hours daily, otherwise, you'll gain more weight instantly!  **MS - [RS]