Shedding 5 Percent of Body Weight Improves Quality as Well as Duration of Sleep

New research found that obese adults who shed weight can improve the quality as well as duration of sleep.

It is a well-known fact that for weight loss adequate sleep is needed. Partial sleep deprivation triggers obesity. In the U.S. over 35 percent of adults are obese and 28 percent of the adults sleep less than six hours a night.  But researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, found that obese adults who  shed 5 percent of their body weight, slept better and longer.

Shedding 5 percent of the body weight not only improves quality of sleep as well as duration but also an individual's mood. The finding of the 2-year study is based on an analysis of  390 participants who took part in the Practice-Based Opportunities for Weight Reduction at the University.

The study included 311 women and 79 men who were randomly assigned to one of three programs that offered support to achieve same diet and exercise goals. The three groups included 'usual care in which the subjects were given printed educational material during quarterly visits with their primary care provider' , 'brief lifestyle counseling that included quarterly visits with their primary care provider, combined with brief meetings with lifestyle coaches' , ' enhanced brief lifestyles counseling, with meal replacements or weight loss medications added to the second intervention.'

The participants' change in weight, sleep duration as well as quality and mood was evaluated after 6 months and 24 months of treatment. The subjects who shed 5 percent or more of their original body weight were compared with those who lost less than 5 percent of the weight.

They found that at 6^th month those in lifestyle counseling groups lost more weight on average compared to those in the usual care group.

Among all the three groups those who lost 5 percent of their weight at 6^th month gained an average of 21.6 minutes of sleep a night compared to those who lost less than 5 percent and got just 1.2 minutes improvement in sleep. The improvement in mood was statistically significant at 24 months.

"Further studies are needed to examine the potential effects of weight regain in diminishing the short-term improvements of weight loss on sleep duration and sleep quality," said  Nasreen Alfaris, MD, MPH, a fellow in the Department of Medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

The results were presented Tuesday at the joint meeting of the International Society of Endocrinology and the Endocrine Society in Chicago.