A large prospective investigation of sleep duration, weight change, and obesity in the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study cohort

Abstract

The relationship between sleep and obesity or weight gain in adults, particularly older populations, remains unclear. In a cohort of 83,377 US men and women aged 51-72 years, we prospectively investigated the association between self-reported sleep duration and weight change over an average of 7.5 years of follow-up (1995-2004). Participants were free of cancer, heart disease, and stroke at baseline and throughout the follow-up. We observed an inverse association between sleep duration per night and weight gain in both men (P for trend = 0.02) and women (P for trend < 0.001). Compared with 7-8 hours of sleep, shorter sleep (<5 hours or 5-6 hours) was associated with more weight gain (in kilograms; men: for <5 hours, β = 0.66, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.19, 1.13, and for 5-6 hours, β = 0.12, 95% CI: -0.02, 0.26; women: for <5 hours, β = 0.43, 95% CI: 0.00, 0.86, and for 5-6 hours, β = 0.23, 95% CI: 0.08, 0.37). Among men and women who were not obese at baseline, participants who reported less than 5 hours of sleep per night had an approximately 40% higher risk of developing obesity than did those who reported 7-8 hours of sleep (for men, odds ratio = 1.45, 95% CI: 1.06, 1.99; for women, odds ratio = 1.37, 95% CI: 1.04, 1.79). The association between short sleep and excess weight gain was generally consistent across different categories of age, educational level, smoking status, baseline body mass index, and physical activity level.

Keywords: body mass index; obesity; sleep.

Figure 1.

Multivariate odds ratios and 95% confidence interval for developing obesity during follow-up for categories of sleep duration in (A) men and (B) women in the National Institutes of Health-AARP Diet and Health Study, 1995–1996. The analysis included men (n = 35,319) and women (n = 32,025) who were not obese at baseline. The number of participants who developed obesity in less than 5 hours, 5–6 hours, 7–8 hours, and 9 or more hours sleep categories were: 62 (10.8%), 792 (7.7%), 1448 (6.2%), and 68 (7.0%) in men and 89 (12.8%), 921 (9.3%), 1,530 (7.5%), and 66 (6.8%) in women, respectively. Multivariate models were adjusted for age, baseline body mass index, race/ethnicity, marital status, educational level, self-reported health, smoking status, alcohol consumption, and coffee consumption. P for trend = 0.25 for men and <0.0001 for women.