
Main health effects of sleep deprivation (See Wikipedia:Sleep deprivation). Model: Mikael Häggström. To discuss image, please see Template talk:Häggström diagrams (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Reporter: Venkat Karra, Ph.D.
Sleep may influence weight by affecting hormones, glucose metabolism and inflammation, say scientists. A new study has found that sleeping more than nine hours a night appears to suppress genetic factors that lead to weight gain. In contrast, getting too little sleep seems to have the opposite effect. Adding a few hours sleep to your night may prevent you from gaining weight. These new findings reveal a complex interaction between sleep and genetic factors linked to body weight.
The study found heritability of body mass index (BMI) — a measurement relating weight and height — was twice as high for short than for long sleepers.
Thus sleep well and stay healthy.
Article:
Sleep Duration and Body Mass Index in Twins: A Gene-Environment Interaction
by Nathaniel F. Watson, MD, MSc; Kathryn Paige Harden, PhD; Dedra Buchwald, MD; Michael V. Vitiello, PhD; Allan I. Pack, MB ChB, PhD; David S. Weigle, MD; Jack Goldberg, PhD
Sleep, Volume 35/ Issue 05 / Tuesday, May 01, 2012
Suppression of the Obesity Gene has favorable effect on length of sleep. Personalized Medicine, the new very promising direction in disease management will benefit form the study reported here.
Yes, indeed. There is certainly an urgent need to address this as there is also a fact that obesity is linked to Cancer possibility. A simple thought is that when A = B, and B = C, can we suspect that A (sleep) = C (Cancer, heart diseases) as in simple maths?. There are some reports on sleep disturbances in cancer patients. Just like in the above case it would be interesting to see whether it would help to prevent the other by addressing the earlier. I do not know /aware if there is any available literature / data on the last point.