Night-owls beware, going to bed late could make you pack on the pounds

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2021-07-01 01:00

International

Photo by Jonas Leupe on Unsplash

Shining a light on night-owls, international research has found that going to bed late and having less than five hours of sleep at night could be increasing their risk of obesity. The researchers characterised a bedtime of midnight or later as a late-night, and suggest that staying awake at night may suppress the secretion of melatonin which is associated with an increased risk of obesity, cardiovascular diseases and cancers. The study also had bad news for nappers, which found that longer daytime napping was also associated with a higher risk of obesity, but the researchers suggest that this could be because a daytime nap may occur more often due to a late night.

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conference: JAMA Network Open

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Organisation/s: Chinese University of Hong Kong, China

Funder: Dr Yusuf is supported by the MaryW. Burke endowed chair of the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario. The Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology (PURE) study is an investigator-initiated study that is funded by the Population Health Research Institute, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario, Support from Canadian Institutes of Health Research’s Strategy for Patient Oriented Research, through the Ontario SPOR Support Unit, as well as the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, and through unrestricted grants from several pharmaceutical companies, with major contributions from AstraZeneca (Canada), Sanofi-Aventis (France and Canada), Boehringer Ingelheim (Germany and Canada), Servier, and GlaxoSmithKline, and additional contributions from Novartis and King Pharma and from various national or local organizations in participating countries.

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