Does Sleeping Too Little Lead to Weight Gain?

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Does sleeping too little lead to weight gain? Two common problems in today’s world are getting enough sleep and the obesity epidemic. A normal amount of sleep is around 7-8hrs these days but can vary depending on the age of the person (Horne). This amount can sometimes be hard for individuals to get because of their work and/or extracurricular activities. As the hours of sleep deprivation add up, the human body changes in various ways. The question is, does sleeping too little lead to weight gain? This is a topic that could benefit people all around the world. Being able to help one’s weight by just sleeping more could change the way people go about their lives and how they learn to manage their time. To see if this is true, BMI, appetite, changes with metabolism and more will be addressed. Sleeping less than the normal can have some effect on BMI and a person’s emotional state. When people with less than 7 hours were compared to people with more than 7 hours of sleep, it was found that people with less than 5 hours had a small BMI increase averaging 1.1 kg m^-2 (Horne). Although this doesn’t seem like a drastic change, it can add up over the years. Sleep has been found to be more important in children than adults. A study was taken on 12 year old children to see what effect sleep had on them. In this study, there was a comparison between overweight children that slept only 14.4 minutes less than normal weight children (Horne). The results brought the conclusion that for every extra hour of sleep, the child was 20%-40% less likely to be overweight (Horne). This appears to be a bigger impact than in adults. Matter of fact, childhood sleep causes long term consequences and can predict people being overweight in the future (Liu). Therefore, childhood sleep can have a longer period effect on weight as compared to adults. Children need the sleep to get their

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