Research
Hormonal
The association between short sleep duration and obesity is stronger in children and adolescents than in adults, and may weaken with age.
Pay close attention to sleep duration, especially if you are a parent or young adult. Children and teens are particularly vulnerable to weight gain from short sleep. While the effect may diminish in older age, maintaining 7-8 hours of sleep is still a key component of metabolic health.
ModerateQualifiesMEDIUM confidence
Findings in both cross-sectional and cohort studies of children suggested short sleep duration is strongly and consistently associated with concurrent and future obesity... This relationship appeared to wane with age.
Why this rating
Based on consistent findings across multiple pediatric studies and prospective adult cohorts showing age-dependent weakening of the effect.
Source
Short Sleep Duration and Weight Gain: A Systematic Review
Sanjay R. Patel et al. · Obesity · 2008
DOI 10.1038/oby.2007.118
systematic_reviewCited 1,509×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
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