This weeks featured article in New Scientist makes for some interesting reading. Without in anyway undermining the reality that healthy eating and exercise are key to maintaining a healthy body weight, they do bring to light 10 very interesting factors that research is indicating are also of significance in western societies ever increasing problem with obesity.

At the top of this list is not enough sleep. The rise in obesity seems to be rising in harmony with a decline in the number of hours people are sleeping on average. People who sleep less than 7 hours a night tend to have a higher body mass index than people who sleep more. A study of 68,000 women over 16 years found that those who slept an average of 5 hours a night gained more weight than those who slept 6 hours, who in turn gained more weight that those who slept 7.

So there you have it. More time in bed may be part of the answer to your problems.

Another interesting factor was actually things like air conditioning and central heating. These climate controls are meaning that we are living in a much steadier and comfortable temperature most of the time. Between 1970 and 2000, the average British home warmed from 13 celcius to 18 celcius. Why does this affect weight? Well studies are showing that in comfortable temperatures we use less energy. In one of these studies in particular, women exposed to 27 celcius versus 22 celcius amounted to a difference of 239 kilocalories a day - that’s the amount of energy in 27 grams of body fat.

Do you really need that heating on so much this winter? It may just save you some pounds in more than just a financial sense.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 9th, 2006 at 12:32 pm and is filed under Health, Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.