Sleep and Home Temperature Could Impact Obesity

Research is constantly being done into reigning in the obesity epidemic and more and more new factors that impact weight keep coming to light – environmental factors such as not only one’s diet but also others’ such as one’s home temperature could be responsible for impacting weight.sleep-and-obesity

Researchers are not suggesting that if you turn down the thermostat in your home to make it colder you will start to lose weight, but they are saying that this could be a contributing factor in determining obesity along with sleep deprivation and other factors.

It has been well established that less sleep is linked to higher obesity rates, and equally it is plausible that temperatures within the home could also impact this – not only turning down the heating in winter, but also turning down the air conditioning in summer could help, according to Dr. David B. Allison, director of the Nutrition Obesity Research Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

This is because extreme temperatures could make the body work harder to maintain normal temperatures, thereby causing some more calories than normal to be burnt.

Clearly there is no one contributor to people’s obesity levels, but the more we understand the better it is for us to check the obesity epidemic.