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14 January 2005
Lack Of Sleep Related To Weight Gain 
An article in the Archives of Internal Medicine says that not enough sleep could make you fat. The Northwestern University researchers are studying how loss of sleep alters the complex metabolic pathways that control appetite, food intake and energy expenditure. "In recent years, a new and unexpected 'obesity villain' has emerged, first from laboratory studies and now, as reported in this issue of the Archives, 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," said journal commentators Joseph Bass and Fred W. Turek. As younger and older Americans alike struggle with an inability to get enough sleep and to control weight, the authors stress the need to investigate whether intervention in sleep disorders could help reduce obesity's negative effects on metabolism and health. In commenting on a second article appearing in the same issue of the Archives, Bass and Turek note that even school age American children are not obtaining enough sleep and that sleep loss during the formative years of life could be putting our youth on a trajectory toward obesity and the metabolic syndrome. Obesity is associated with metabolic and cardiovascular disorders often referred to as the metabolic syndrome, which increases an individual's risk of developing a serious disease, say Bass and Turek.
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