Sleep is a reparative process in the human body that refreshes the mind and relieves fatigue. About one-third of a person’s life is spent in sleep. Good sleep is one of the three health standards recognized by the international community. Short or poor sleep will affect health.
In today’s society, staying up late has become the new normal for many young people. Often staying up late will bring great harm to the body. For example, staying up late will cause immune dysfunction, biological clock disorders, etc. What’s more, staying up late for a long time will also lead to sudden death. As everyone knows, the place where the meat grows is wrong, and it is also related to lack of sleep.
Recently, researchers from Shanghai Tenth People’s Hospital affiliated to Tongji University School of Medicine published an article entitled “Short Sleep Duration Was Associated with Increased Regional Body Fat in US Adults: The NHANES from 2011 to 2018″ in the journal ” Nutrients ” research paper.
The study showed that people who lacked sleep and slept less than 7 hours a day had more fat distribution in the trunk, arms and legs. This means that lack of sleep leads to thick legs and strong arms .
Obesity is both a feature and a disease. Obesity is one of the top ten chronic diseases identified by the World Health Organization. Obese people are more prone to metabolic diseases, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, and chronic kidney diseases. With nearly 40% of the world’s population overweight and 13% obese, obesity and its related diseases are a major global health problem.
For the study, researchers analyzed sleep among 9,413 participants in the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), 4,851 men and 4,562 women, with an average age of 37.6 years. Sleep time is divided into short sleep (
Normal sleep (7-9h/day) and long sleep (>9h/day). Use instrument scans to measure fat in different parts of the body, including the torso, arms, and legs. The fat mass index is calculated by dividing the fat mass in different parts by the square of the height. The relationship between sleep duration and fat mass index at different sites was assessed.
Data analysis found that the average sleep duration for all participants was 7.1 ± 1.5 hours/day.
Overall, compared with normal sleepers, short sleepers had higher trunk, arm and leg fat mass indices , and there was no significant difference between long sleepers and normal sleepers.
After adjusting for confounding factors, short-sleep participants remained higher on the trunk, arm, and leg fat mass index.
The relationship between fat mass in different regions and sleep time
Analyses by gender found similar results were observed in sleep-deprived males and females. But in women with short sleep, arms had a higher fat mass index compared to men .
The relationship between fat mass and sleep time in different gender and different regions