Teens who go to bed late more likely gain weight

Published in the journal Sleep, the study analyzes data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which has tracked the influences and behaviors of U.S. teenagers since 1994.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, conducted a study to investigate the association between late bedtime hours and BMI of teenagers.

Author Lauren Asarnow, a doctoral pupil for the University of California, Berkeley, announced, “Obesity is apparently rising among children and grown-ups, and there’s also a virulent disease of sleep deprivation but later sleep valuable time choice in teenagers often”. It evaluated their development over the course of three stages of their lives: onset of puberty, college-years, and young adulthood. They found that majority who go to bed late, gained weight relatively over the period of five years.

Other researchers UC Berkeley and from Columbia University are coauthors of the study.

For the study, researchers analyzed data from more than 3,300 American teens and found that each extra hour of late bedtime was associated with a more than two-point increase in body mass index (BMI).

And exercise, the amount of time spent in front of computer or TV screens and the number of hours slept made no difference. A few evidence supports that staying up late wrecks havoc on their metabolism and leads to weight gain.

This is confirmed by surveys in which teens report that they do not get the recommended nine hours of sleep a night, and report having trouble staying awake at school. The result is apparently the weight gain.

Asarnow stated that if you are going to bed an hour later, you could be shifting BMI categories from normal to overweight and even a 2-point increase could be clinically significant.

This year, a study of 522 people by British researchers suggested people who needed a lie in at weekends to make up for lack of sleep in the week were at greater risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes. When the study began, the nurses were all not obese and healthy. “There’s been a few literature looking at the relationship [between] late bedtimes and weight gain cross-sectionally, but no one’s ever looked at what happens long-term”. But, the picture is becoming clear that those who go to sleep late, or do not get much sleep, gain weight.