A study published in the journal SLEEP reveals that healthy adults who habitually go to bed late are more likely to gain weight . Specifically, Andrea Spaeth and her colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania (USA) carried out an experiment in which they studied in the laboratory the response of a series of individuals between 22 and 45 years of age whose rest was limited to sleeping 4 in the morning to 8 in the morning for five nights in a row . And they found that they gained more weight when compared with those who slept an average of 10 hours the same number of days (from 10 at night to 8 in the morning).
The fundamental reason for these differences, the researchers conclude, is that individuals who slept less consumed more food , especially at night, and that the proportion of fat ingested at those times was higher than at any other time of the day.
The experiments also revealed that, under conditions of restricted sleep hours, men gain more weight than women.
