The most shocking finding was that scientists found that every extra hour they stayed awake eventually resulted in 2.1 points on the BMI index.
Advertisement
The normal range of a health adult is reportedly between 18.5 to 24.9 BMI.
“Obesity is obviously growing among adolescents and adults, and there’s also an epidemic of lack of sleep and later bed time preference in teens”, study author Lauren Asarnow, a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, told CBS News. A few evidence supports that staying up late wrecks havoc on their metabolism and leads to weight gain.
The study analysed data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which has tracked the influences and behaviours of United States teenagers since 1994.
The link between late bedtimes and BMI increase was not significantly affected by total sleep time, amount of exercise, or time spent in front of computers or televisions, the investigators found. The “gain” is said to have approximately occurred over a five-year period. On the other hand, an individual is considered overweight if his computed BMI is 25 to 29.9.
The sleep study focused on the onset of puberty, the college age years and young adulthood and compared the bedtimes and BMI of the participants from 1994 to 2009.
A team of researchers analyzed data on more than 3,300 teens and young adults recorded at different intervals over the course of about 15 years.
Adolescents in the study reported their bedtimes and sleep hours while researchers calculated their BMI based on their height and weight.
The human circadian rhythm, or body clock, which regulates physiological and metabolic functions, typically shifts to a later sleep cycle at the onset of puberty. Furthermore, people who often go to sleep much later are prone to skipping breakfast, a practice that has been associated with weight gain. Even better, going to bed at a regular time could help us maintain a healthy weight; the opposite is also true for those who chronically go to bed late and get few solid hours of sleep.
Advertisement
The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends that adolescents get a little more than nine hours of nightly sleep for optimal health and daytime alertness during the critical transition from childhood to adulthood. By shifting bedtime hours, they can “create good sleep habits and maybe prevent weight gain over time”.
