Sleeping less than six hours a night or more than nine can make you fat, according to a new U.S. government study.
The study -- one of the largest to show a link between irregular sleep and obesity -- also connected light sleepers to higher smoking rates, less physical activity and more alcohol use.
The research adds weight to a stream of studies that have found obesity and other health problems in those who don't get proper shuteye, said Dr. Ron Kramer, a Colorado physician and a spokesman for the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.
"The data is all coming together that short sleepers and long sleepers don't do so well," Kramer said.
The study released Wednesday is based on door-to-door surveys of 87,000 U.S. adults from 2004 through 2006 conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Such surveys can't prove cause-effect relationships, so — for example — it's not clear if smoking causes sleeplessness or if sleeplessness prompts smoking, said Charlotte Schoenborn, the study's lead author.
It also did not account for the influence of other factors, such as depression, which can contribute to heavy eating, smoking, sleeplessness and other problems.
Many elderly people are in the group who get the least sleep, which would help explain why physical activity rates are low. Those skimpy sleepers who are younger may still feel too tired to exercise, experts said.
Source: Xinhua/Agencies
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