Tuesday, January 11, 2005

OK YOU FAT BASTARDS...........ITS TIME TO SLEEP IN, YOU FINALLY HAVE AN EXCUSE!!

So, if i want to shed my few extra xmas kilos, i get to sleep in.....yee hah...there is a god!!


A STUDY published today found that people who sleep less tend to be fat, and experts said it was time to find out if more sleep would fight obesity."We've put so much emphasis on diet and exercise that we've failed to recognise the value of good sleep," said Fred Turek, a physician at Northwestern University in the US.
"In fact society emphasises just the opposite", he said, pointing to workplaces where long work days were common.
Today's study from Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk covered 1000 people and found that total sleep time decreased as body mass index - a measure of weight based on height - increased.
Men slept an average of 27 minutes less than women, and overweight and obese patients slept less than patients with normal weights, it said.

In general the fatter subjects slept about 1.8 hours a week less than those with normal weights.
"Americans experience insufficient sleep and corpulent bodies. Clinicians are aware of the burden of obesity on patients," the study said.
"Our findings suggest that major extensions of sleep time may not be necessary, as an extra 20 minutes of sleep per night seems to be associated with a lower body mass index.
"We caution that this study does not establish a cause-and-effect relationship between restricted sleep and obesity, (but) investigations demonstrating success in weight loss via extensions of sleep would help greatly to establish such a relationship."
The study was published in the Archives of Internal Medicine along with an editorial by Dr Turek and Northwestern colleague Joseph Bass commenting on it and related research.
In a separate interview, Dr Turek said some studies had shown sleep deprivation caused declines in an appetite suppressing protein hormone called leptin, and increases in another hormone that caused a craving for food.
In addition neuropeptides in the brain governing sleep and obesity appeared to overlap, he said.
"It is now critical to determine the importance of lack of sufficient sleep during the early formative years in putting our youth on a trajectory toward obesity ... a trajectory that could be altered if sleep loss is indeed playing a role in this epidemic," the editorial said.
Obesity had been rising dramatically in developed countries and had reached epidemic levels in the US, it said, leading to a variety of health problems.
"In recent years, a new and unexpected 'obesity villain' has emerged, first from laboratory studies and now ... in population-based studies: insufficient sleep.
"However, while there is a growing awareness among some sleep, metabolic, cardiovascular, and diabetes researchers that insufficient sleep could be leading to a cascade of disorders, few in the general medicine profession or in the lay public have yet made the connection."

4 Comments:

Blogger gemmak said...

Yay....you have new bits! Well done you told ya it wasn't that difficult! :o)

5:53 AM  
Blogger Lois Lane said...

And here I thought all of the extra jiggly parts were because of too much holiday yumminess! All I need is about 8,999 hours of slim sleep and I'll be Kate Moss! Woohoo! Thanks for the tip!
Lois Lane

8:30 AM  
Blogger if_i_had_a_hammer said...

i must burn serious pounds on sundays then. sometimes i don't even get out of bed...

...not that i'm proud of that.

1:22 PM  
Blogger Michelle said...

Jack~ Was i too harsh?

Gem ~ It was too! I made big boo boo's!

Lois ~ Everyone has jiggly bits, its just that some are jigglier than others :)

Hammer ~ Smug bastard!

4:24 PM  

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