As co-author Virend Somers, MD, Ph.D., explains in a press release, “Our findings show that shorter sleep, even in young, healthy and relatively lean subjects, is associated with an increase in caloric intake, a very small weight gain and a significant increase in abdominal fat accumulation.”
He adds that the lack of sleep appears to be the cause of the “redirecting” of fat to the visceral compartment, and further, “the catch-up sleep, at least in the short term, does not reverse the accumulation of visceral fat.”
And since the subjects didn’t gain as much, but did have more visceral fat, the study authors point out that this kind of fat accumulation can easily fly under the radar.
This post Not Enough Sleep Means More Calories (& Belly Fat) was original published at “https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/study-not-enough-sleep-means-more-calories-and-belly-fat”
