Original ArticleSleep duration and obesity in a population-based study
Introduction
The prevalence of obesity has doubled during the last 25 years, and currently one-third of adults in the United States are obese [1]. Obesity is associated with an increased risk of many chronic diseases including heart disease [2], diabetes [2] and cancers at multiple sites [3], [4]. Short sleep duration may increase the risk of obesity by altering hormones involved in the regulation of appetite [5]. In many cross-sectional studies, short sleep duration was associated with a higher body weight in adults and children (reviewed in [6], [7], [8]). A similar association has also been identified in several [9], [10], [11], [12], though not all [13], [14], [15], prospective longitudinal studies. A U-shaped association has also been observed in several studies [11], [16], [17], [18], [19] wherein both short and long sleep durations were associated with the odds of obesity. We examined the relationship between sleep duration and obesity in a population-based sample of more than 5000 adult US women. Unlike most previous cross-sectional studies, we were able to consider the association of both recent and usual lifelong sleep duration with the odds of obesity.
Section snippets
Methods
Women in this analysis were enrolled as controls in the Collaborative Breast Cancer Study, a population-based case–control study of determinants for breast cancer comprised of women ages 20–75 who resided in Wisconsin, Massachusetts and New Hampshire [20]. The study was conducted according to protocols approved by the institutional review boards at each study site. Participants were randomly selected from drivers license lists if younger than age 65 or from a roster of Medicare beneficiaries if
Results
Characteristics of participants by sleep duration at the reference date are shown in Table 1. Older women reported sleeping fewer hours. Any alcohol consumption was less often reported by women reporting both short (<6 h) and long durations (⩾9 h) of sleep. Higher pack years of smoking were also associated with shorter sleep intervals. Women reporting fewer hours of sleep were more likely to be post-menopausal, not currently married, to have less than a high school education and to not
Discussion
In this population-based study, we found that obese and severely obese women were more likely to report shorter durations of sleep in the recent past and over their adult lifetimes. The odds of being overweight (defined as a body mass index of 25–29.9 kg/m2) were also modestly increased among women reporting habitual shorter sleep durations in adult life. This association was consistently observed regardless of a woman’s age, physical activity levels, smoking, and employment status. Obesity was
Conflicts of interest
None.
Acknowledgments
This study was supported by National Cancer Institute Grants R01 CA47147, R01 CA47305, and R01 CA69664.
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