We know that lack of sleep is (very) bad for your health. Going to bed late and sleeping little increases cardiovascular risk, promotes memory and attention disorders, upsets the balance of the intestinal microbiota…
According to a recent Chinese study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)people who go to bed late and who sleep insufficiently would have an increased risk of suffering from obesity.
To reach this conclusion, researchers from Fuwai Hospital (in China) worked with a group of 136,652 volunteers (recruited between 2005 and 2009) aged 35 to 70. Among the participants, 14.4% (or 19,660 people) regularly went to bed “late”, that is to say after midnight.
Staying up late makes your stomach fat
Result ? The researchers found that people who regularly went to bed “late” (more specifically: between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m.) had an increased risk of obesity, and in particular abdominal obesity.
As a reminder, we speak of obesity when the body mass index (BMI) is greater than 30. The body mass index is calculated by dividing the weight (in kilograms) by the height (in meters) multiplied by it beforehand. -even. Abdominal obesity, meanwhile, corresponds to a waist circumference (at the level of the navel) greater than 102 centimeters in men, 88 centimeters in women.
Why does lack of sleep make you fat? The explanations are multiple: first, because lack of sleep promotes daytime sleepiness (we feel tired during the day) and depression, it increases the risk of snacking too sweet and too fatty. Second, because lack of sleep has an impact on the hormonal system: leptin (the hormone responsible for the feeling of satiety) decreases while ghrelin (the hormone that stimulates appetite) increases.
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