16 March 2008
Melbourne, Australia
Researchers at the Nihon University have found that men who have less than five hours sleep a night run greater risks of obesity and are more likely to have high levels of blood sugar that could cause diabetes.
Yoshitaka Kaneita, Nihon University medical department associate professor and the study’s lead author, said that lack of sleep triggers a hormone in the blood, which stimulates the appetite, reports the Daily Telegraph.
He said that the hormone “Increases a sense of hunger as well as an appetite for high–calorie food,” which calls for people to pay due attention to how much they sleep.
For the study, Kaneita and his team looked at 21 693 men in 1999 and followed up to see how they were doing seven years later.
They found that men who were not fat in 1999 were 1.36 times more likely to become obese if they slept fewer than five hours a night on average over the next seven years as compared to men who slept more.
They also found that short–sleepers were 1.27 times more likely to have high blood–sugar levels.
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