As college students, finding time to sleep among the hundred things on our to-do list can become difficult. Many of us are willing to sacrifice sleep in order to utilize that time for the purpose of completing assignments or to study. Sometimes, students will even pull “all-nighters” the night preceding a major assignment or exam. A recent study done at the Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health linked the lack of sleep that students experience in high school and college to obesity. Obviously, were not all going to get fat because we don’t sleep as much as we should, but we are 20% more likely to gain weight over time because we aren’t getting a full nights worth of sleep.
The study was created back in 1995 and has been ongoing until this year. During the years of 1995 to 2001, researchers involved in the study collected data from the approximate 10,000 kids, ages 16-21, involved in this study. This research was collected so early on because they were examining the long term effects from not sleeping the recommended 8 hours every night. One fifth of the group of students in the study stated that they received 6 hours or less of sleep every night. This group was 20% more susceptible to obesity because lack of sleep has been found to increase BMI levels in the body.
On of the faults I found with the study was that records of daily meals and consumption was not collected. This plays a huge role in the contribution of obesity and one of the essential elements that was mentioned missing in the article. When teens don’t get enough sleep, they are quick to pick up a caffeinated beverage, carb-loaded drink or snack to provide them with energy that they lack due to not sleeping. These patterns among teens are extremely important to measure because that could very well count toward the 20% susceptibility to obesity. I believe that the study started out promising but as our generations priorities shifted, the researchers in this study should have tweaked the data they were collecting in order to provide more accurate and relative results.
Works Cited:
Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. “Teen sleeplessness piles on risk for obesity.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 20 August 2014. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140820111958.htm>.
I completely agree with your thoughts about the late-night snacks. While the lack of sleep itself might also have an effect, I believe the main culprit is the food and drinks taken after a certain time at night.
On most nights, I eat dinner around 7pm. If I stay up until 1am, the six hour break is usually enough to make me hungry again. At that hour, I do not want to cook a real meal or prepare any healthy food. Instead, the bag of Doritos or the microwaveable hot pockets will come out.
In addition to your point, I want to note that another reason for obesity being linked to a lack of sleep could be reverse causality. People who do not get enough sleep at night are the same people who care less about their health in general. They could be less likely to eat healthy food and exercise.
I think this topic is extremely relative to all college and high school students. I admit that I myself snack whenever I am up late doing homework or studying. Snacking at such a late hour is maybe one of the easiest ways to put on weight since after snacking you are not moving around and not burning off those calories. All carbohydrates and calories that are not utilized for energy are stored as fat in the body, hence leading to obesity. By staying up, you create more of an opportunity to eat food, because while you are sleeping you cannot be consuming food. So it makes sense that there is a correlation between lack of sleep and weight gain amongst college and high school students.
I think this is a very interesting topic, and I have to agree that the lack of recording daily meals is a big fault in this experiment. Were the students who were staying up late and not getting enough sleep eating perfect diets? Or were they eating midnight snacks of Doritos and cookies while they were studying?Another contributing factor could also be that on weekends, college students tend to get less sleep because of partying. Drinking at these parties adds to the caloric intake of these students which could also easily lead to weight gain. In order for this to be a better experiment, the students diets should be monitored and they should have groups that eat really healthy, and groups that don’t eat really healthy. If they were to have done this experiment more thoroughly the first time, it could have produced from very interesting and helpful data.