Less sleep could mean more weight

People who sleep less tend to be overweight, a new study has found, and experts said it was time to examine whether more sleep will fight obesity.

“We’ve put so much emphasis on diet and exercise that we’ve failed to recognize the value of good sleep,” said Fred Turek, director of the Center for Sleep and Circadian Biology at Northwestern University. “In fact, society emphasizes just the opposite.”

The study from Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk covered 1,000 people and found that total sleep time decreased as body mass index -- a measure of weight based on height -- increased. Men slept an average of 27 minutes less than women, and overweight and obese patients slept less than patients with normal weights, it said. In general, the heavier subjects slept about 1.8 hours a week less than those with normal weights.

“We caution that this study does not establish a cause-and-effect relationship between restricted sleep and obesity, [but] investigations demonstrating success in weight loss via extensions of sleep would help greatly to establish such a relationship,” the study said.

It was published in the Jan. 10 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.