A study that tracked near 70,000 middle-aged women over 16 years has recently presented at American Thoracic Society International Conference. It is the largest study to track the effects of sleep habits on weight loss.
The study concluded that women who slept five hours per night were 32% more likely to experience major weight gain of 33 pounds in average, and 15% more likely to become obese, compared to those who slept at least seven hours per night.
Those 70,000 middle-aged women were first monitored in 1986, and the research tracked their weight every 2 years for 16 years. At the start of the study, for those who slept five hours or less per night weighed an average of 5.4 pounds more than those sleeping 7 hours. Those women also gained 1.6 pounds more in average in next 10 years. That is 16 pounds in 10 years, and 32 pounds in 20 years.
"A small change in weight can increase a person's risk of other health problems like hypertension and diabetes," says lead researcher Sanjay Patel, M.D., Assistant Professor of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH. "The amount presented was an average amount, some women gained much more than that."