Exposure to light during sleep related to weight gain in women: study | Health

WASHINGTON: According to a new study published, women who sleep with a television or a lit lamp in the bedroom are more likely to gain weight.

The research, published in the JAMA (Internal of American Medical Association), was based on a survey of nearly 44,000 Americans, followed five years later.

Women were clbadified according to their level of exposure to artificial night light (ALAN), which came from various sources, ranging from small night lights or alarm radios to light from the street, through TVs or lighting the room.

One of the key findings is that women who slept with a television or light lit in the room were 17% more likely to have gained five kilograms (11 pounds) or more during the period in which they lived. ;study.

The correlation remained strong even after taking into account factors such as sleep duration, diet and physical activity.

Although the authors warned that they could not establish a specific causal link, they added that their findings were in addition to a growing body of evidence supporting sleeping in a dark room.

"Public health strategies to reduce obesity could consider interventions to reduce RAL during sleep," wrote Dale Sandler and Yong-Moon Mark Park of the National Institute of Health Sciences in North Carolina and their co-sponsors.

They suggested that light suppresses melatonin production, disrupting circadian rhythm and eating habits.

It is also possible that light acts as a "chronic stressor" disrupting the release of stress hormones, such as glucocorticoids, which play a role in the regulation of food intake, or that there is another mechanism at work that directly affects the metabolism.

The authors recognized several limitations, including the fact that the data were self-reported and did not know how intense the different light sources were.

High exposure to light can also "reflect a multitude of measures of socio-economic disadvantage and unhealthy lifestyles, all of which could contribute to weight gain and obesity".

Commenting on the article, Malcolm von Schantz, a professor of chronobiology at the University of Surrey in Britain, said: "What is innovative in this article, is that it's This is a longitudinal study comparing the weight of the same individuals initially and for more than five years later. "

He added, "These new discoveries will not change the advice of maintaining good sleep hygiene and avoiding bright, electronic distractions in the bedroom, but they further strengthen the case for this advice."