I know personally I always sleep in a pitch dark room because my Mom always said it promoted better sleep.  Of course she never told me why or if there was any science behind it, you just believe your Mom when she tells you something.  I have become so accustomed to this that i find it hard to sleep with even a night light in the room.  After reading this recent study I am very glad that I sleep the way that I do because Ohio State Researchers have published a report saying that sleeping with a light on at night makes you gain weight.  This may seem a little bit crazy but researchers aren’t claiming this without proof of course.

The study took mice and housed them in 3 different conditions that are as follows: “24 hours of constant light, a standard light-dark cycle (16 hours of light at 150 lux, 8 hours of dark), or 16 hours of daylight and 8 hours of dim light (about 5 lux of light).”

After a week into the study, the mice that spent night time hours in a dim light showed an increased body mass over the other two groups.  Throughout the rest of the trial, the same results followed.  The final results showed that the light-at-night mice had gained about 12 grams of body fat compared to only those in the standard light cycle who only gained 8.  The weight that the dim light-at-night mice gained showed higher levels of epididymal fat and impaired glucose tolerance fat, which are both markers of pre-diabetes.

Ohio States lead researcher Laura Fonken, reported her findings in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and added that she believes it has to do with when food is eaten.  An additional part of the experiment was to restrict eating to the regular times and to also let them have free range.  Because the lights were on non-stop the mice were unable to gauge when their normal eating times were.  When the eating was kept during normal times, the mice did not gain nearly as much weight.  When given the chance to eat when they thought it was time, they gained more weight.  Fonken believes that the time you consume the food has a lot to do with if you gain weight or not.  The reason for this may be to do with the light interrupting levels of hormone melatonin which plays a part in your metabolism.  The light also disrupts the expression of clock genes which helps to give the animals control on their feeding and active times.

This study is another key part to one day solving our obesity epidemic.  “Light at night is an environmental factor that may be contributing to the obesity epidemic in ways that people don’t expect,” said co-researcher Randy Nelson.  There have been previous studies that looked at the long term use of television or computer use in the bedroom and are tying that to increased obesity.  Figuring out all the different pieces to this puzzle won’t be a quick fix but this study may just help push it in the right direction.

I think this study is pretty cool because it encompass a few things that I wanted to talk about.  Another student recently posted a blog about whether eating after 8PM really made you gain weight or not.  They stated that because you are drawn to higher fat foods at night that could cause weight gain but otherwise, it doesn’t really matter when you eat as long as your getting the normal amount of daily calories.  I would like to argue that point and I think that this study shows some really interesting ways to do that.  The light effects you more than you would assume because it messes up what your body thinks is supposed to happen.  Do I think that the light at night really makes you gain the weight? No, there are a number of third variable as well as chance that could play a key role in that.  However, I do believe that overtime the light at night could play a significant role in weight gain because of what it does to your internal clock.  I think this study has a little while to go before we 100% confirm this theory but it’s definitely off to a good and promising start.

www.buzzfeed.com

Lighten up to get heavy