Maybe Your Curtains Are Making You Fat!

Are you getting fat?

Well, there is a pleasant way of fighting it---go to sleep!

If you have not drawn out the light by pulling up the curtains tightly, and are going through a "disrupted sleep-wake pattern" due to artificial bulbs, then you can be sure that obesity is creeping up on you, according to hindustantimes.

A new study by researchers at Leiden University Medical Centre, Netherlands, shows that those who sleep with lights on (and why on earth would any numbskull do that, anyway?) or while watching TV, or when using mobile phones, then they gain weight.

The lead researcher, Patrick Rensen with his team, used mice to study how they could be subjected to 24 hours of artificial light, according to fitnhit.

Another control group of mice was subjected to 12 hours of light and 12 hours of darkness. All the mice were injected with radioactively tagged fats to observe and assess their brown fat activity. The amount they ate and moved were also watched.

Mice that were exposed to even a dim light at night gained 50 percent more weight in eight weeks, as compared to mice sleeping in total darkness, according to mercola. Even if the amount of food and fitness in both groups were the same, the results tended to vary in disfavor of those who slept with light at night.

It is clear that light controls your biological clock, which in turn monitors your metabolism, and spurs you to eat more and gain weight.

The survey showed that artificial lights can disturb the body clock and also the brown fat cells that set fire to the calories. Hence switch off all the lights and electronic gadgets before you sleep.

Nowadays, most people stay online for about 20 hours a week. For the 16 to 24-year-olds, this figure could go upto 27 hours too.

Sander Kooijman, a researcher, agreed that obesity has a close link with a disturbed sleep-wake pattern in humans and is stoked by artificial light.

The survey is published in National Academy of Sciences Journal Proceedings.