Is your BEDROOM making you fat? Bright lights and streetlamps 'could be causing weight gain' -
Do you spend all day eating salad and carry out lots of exercise, but never seem to get any thinner?
Your bedtime habits could be to blame, as new research shows too much light in the bedroom may make us pile on weight.
Scientists believe that light at night, including street light creeping through the curtains and the glow of smartphones, is causing us to pile on the pounds.
In experiments on mice, they showed that animals exposed to light 24-hours a day for five weeks put on 50 per cent more fat than creatures who kept more normal hours.
This was despite all the animals eating the same amount of food and doing the same amount of exercise.
Tests showed that constant light disrupted their body clock and slowed down a vital calorie-burning process.
A previous study by the same team from Leiden University showed that animals kept in constant light put on weight more quickly than creatures fed fatty food.
Researcher Patrick Rensen, Leiden University Medical Center, said he believes his findings have relevance to people who are battling the bulge.
He said ‘I think it would be really helpful to maintain the biological rhythms as much as possible, by at least sleeping in a darkened bedroom.’
Writing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, he said that even something as simple as checking a mobile phone for messages on waking during the night could stop the body clock from resetting properly in the morning and lead to weight gain.
With exposure to light at night linked to a host of other ills, from cancer to depression, experts say we need to learn to love the dark.
Speaking recently, Richard Stevens, a breast cancer researcher from the US, said: 'The importance of sleep has finally entered mainstream thinking and practice; however the importance of dark is still greatly under-appreciated.'
Read more: -
Do you spend all day eating salad and carry out lots of exercise, but never seem to get any thinner?
Your bedtime habits could be to blame, as new research shows too much light in the bedroom may make us pile on weight.
Scientists believe that light at night, including street light creeping through the curtains and the glow of smartphones, is causing us to pile on the pounds.
In experiments on mice, they showed that animals exposed to light 24-hours a day for five weeks put on 50 per cent more fat than creatures who kept more normal hours.
This was despite all the animals eating the same amount of food and doing the same amount of exercise.
Tests showed that constant light disrupted their body clock and slowed down a vital calorie-burning process.
A previous study by the same team from Leiden University showed that animals kept in constant light put on weight more quickly than creatures fed fatty food.
Researcher Patrick Rensen, Leiden University Medical Center, said he believes his findings have relevance to people who are battling the bulge.
He said ‘I think it would be really helpful to maintain the biological rhythms as much as possible, by at least sleeping in a darkened bedroom.’
Writing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, he said that even something as simple as checking a mobile phone for messages on waking during the night could stop the body clock from resetting properly in the morning and lead to weight gain.
With exposure to light at night linked to a host of other ills, from cancer to depression, experts say we need to learn to love the dark.
Speaking recently, Richard Stevens, a breast cancer researcher from the US, said: 'The importance of sleep has finally entered mainstream thinking and practice; however the importance of dark is still greatly under-appreciated.'
Read more: -
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3078344/Is-BEDROOM-making-fat-Bright-lights-streetlamps-causing-weight-gain.html
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