Can Too Much Light at Night Fatten You Up?
I have always been nighttime light sensitive. Maybe it’s because I grew up in a wooded area with very little ambient light outside. My grandfather on the other hand, who lived most his adult life in the New York City area, used to find it way too dark at night out in the “county” when he came to stay with us.
When it’s time for me to fall sleep, I need the room to be DARK. A full moon or a too-bright bedside clock will tend to disturb me. I thought I was just “overly sensitive” until I read a study a few years ago which found that when an adult’s eyelids are closed in a dark room, women were nine times more sensitive to (aware of) light sources. Now I know I’m not just sensitive—I’m female, haha!!
This June a new study was published in the Journal of American Medicine (JAMA) on the health effects of room brightness while one’s asleep. Researchers studied nearly 44,000 women subjects (for now obvious reasons) to assess the correlation between, interestingly enough, the risk of obesity and sleeping in an artificially illuminated environment. What constitutes an artificially lit up sleeping room? Particularly one in which a TV was left running or a small light was left on.
Here’s what was found: Women who reported sleeping in an artificially illuminated room had an 11+ pounds weight gain over a 5-year period when compared with the control group who reportedly slept without the presence of artificial light.
As I have shared with my readers before, being under slept has long been associated with being overweight/obese, but this is the first time artificial light sources present during sleep time have been studied to see if this factor might have a similar effect—and so, it appears, it does! What’s unknown at this time is whether or not artificial light abbreviates one’s sleep cycles, or if it tends to cause more wakefulness in a person throughout the night.
Whatever the root cause for this newly illuminated weight gain condition, the fix is easy. Just do what your momma used to tell you, “TURN OFF THE LIGHTS AND GO TO BED!”