Research
Energy balance
In adults, each hour of reduced sleep is associated with a 0.35 unit increase in BMI, suggesting a dose-response relationship.
For adults, losing an hour of sleep per night is associated with a measurable increase in BMI (approx 0.35 units). Prioritizing adequate sleep duration may help maintain a healthy weight.
ModerateSupportsMEDIUM confidence
In adults, the pooled β for short sleep duration was -0.35 (-0.57 to -0.12) unit change in BMI per hour of sleep change.
Why this rating
Large sample size and consistent negative correlation, but limited by cross-sectional design.
Source
Meta-Analysis of Short Sleep Duration and Obesity in Children and Adults
Francesco P. Cappuccio et al. · SLEEP · 2008
DOI 10.1093/sleep/31.5.619
Meta-analysis · 30 studiesCited 2,057×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- Causal inference between short sleep and obesity is difficult due to lack of control for important confounders and inconsistent evidence of temporal sequence in prospective studies.Strong
- Short sleep duration is consistently associated with a significantly increased risk of obesity in both children and adults, with pooled odds ratios of 1.89 for children and 1.55 for adults.Moderate
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