By Dr. Mercola
Nearly 71 percent of U.S. adults aged 20 and over are overweight or obese. Among children, nearly 21 percent of 12- to 19-year-olds are considered obese, along with 17 percent of 6- to 11-year-olds and 9 percent of 2- to 5-year-olds.1 Exercise and, particularly, diet, definitely play a role in this epidemic, but there’s another often-overlooked factor that may help people to keep their weight in check with little added effort. In fact, it requires nothing but getting more sleep.
Like overweight and obesity, insufficient sleep is a public health problem in the U.S. — and it could be that the two are related. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that 50 million to 70 million adults have sleep or wakefulness disorder, while more than 35 percent said they sleep fewer than seven hours during a typical 24-hour period.2
Meanwhile, this lack of sleep is having serious consequences, like unintentionally falling asleep during the day (reported by 38 percent of survey respondents) or nodding off while driving (reported by nearly 5 percent). Your weight, however, may also suffer.
Sleeping Well Associated With Smaller Waist, Lower Weight
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U.K. researchers looked into the connection between how long you sleep (sleep duration), diet and metabolic health among more than 1,600 adults.3 Past research has linked not enough sleep with an increased risk of metabolic diseases, including obesity, and this study found similar results. Sleep duration was negatively associated with body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference, which means the longer a person slept, the smaller their waist and lower their BMI were likely to be.
Specifically, people who slept for an average of…