When individuals go to the bed late they tend to eat more due to inactivity and raise the calorie intake from snacks at such time. Such behavior accounts to weight gain in people and also suffer from obesity because of short sleep hours, according to a research presented on 11th June at SLEEP 2008, the 22nd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies.
The lead author of the study Plamen Penev, MD, PhD, of the University of Chicago examined 11 healthy people who had successfully finished with the two 14 day studies held in a random manner, in three months. The research was carried out in the laboratory with 5.5 hours or 8.5 hours of bed sleep and ad lib food intake.
The findings of the study demonstrated that when the bedtimes were restricted to five and a half hours in these 11 people they gained more amount of energy from the snacks. Whereas the carbohydrate level was seen to be rising in these healthy people.
The study authors concluded that factors such as unlimited availability of food and modification in attaining rewards and motivation might be the reason for the increased consumption of snacks. Thus this links with recurrent bedtime limitation.