by

Joseph

Keeping the lights on at night may add inches to your waist, new evidence suggests. According to a study published in the International Journal of Obesity, people who use night lights tend to be heavier than people who aren't exposed to artificial light during bedtime. Surprised? Brace yourselves, you're about to learn something about how light affects weight.

For some time, biologists have known that artificial light-at-night (ALAN) can cause the body's internal clocks to go haywire. Melatonin, the sleep hormone, is at its highest levels when you are sleeping; darkness stimulates melatonin production. But ALAN causes the body to suppress melatonin production which can cause adverse physiological changes resulting in weight gain.

Research scientists Rybnikova, Haim and Portnov utilized this knowledge to identify and measure how strong the associations between ALAN and country-wide overweight and obesity rates happen to be.

To find out, they analyzed recent satellite images of night lights from the US Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP).

Controlling for per capita GDP, level of urbanization, birth rate, food consumption and regional differences, Rybnikova et al hoped the satellite images would help them learn more about this problem.

They learned that ALAN along with other factors explained 70 % of the observed variations in the prevalence of obesity and overweight in more than eighty observed countries. In other words, satellite images helped confirm what scientists had come to know long ago - artificial light at night makes people fat.

We know that light affects human mood and reproduction. Animal models show a relationship between light at night and accelerated aging and cancer. Now data from Rybnikova et al tells us that artificial light at night can stimulate weight gain.

Rybnikova et al pointed out that the nearly 2.5 billion people meet the World Health Organization (WHO) definition of overweight and obese, and that the problem is rapidly on track to become a global pandemic. What can be done to reverse this trend?

Your Third Eye Is Open Even When You're Sleeping

People maybe surprised to know that we have been created with a "third eye". God created us with two external eyes and another photosensitive organ deep within the brain. This light sensing organ is the pineal gland and it produces the melatonin that helps us sleep at night.

Even after we close our external eyes, the pineal gland is able to sense light - whether that light be natural or artificial. When the organ detects light, it won't produce melatonin.

Eventually the pineal gland will become confused, prolonged exposure to light stimuli (artificial in this case) will cause the organ to think that the body should remain awake. As a result, the pineal gland will erroneously decrease melatonin production and throw the natural day/night rhythm out of whack.

A method that could reverse the global obesity trend may simply be turning off every artificial light source in the bedroom before going to sleep at night. Since the pineal gland detects light, keeping the room dark during sleep time may prevent the gland from suppressing melatonin production thereby possibly preventing eventual weight gain.

Regardless of whether people accept the mounting evidence linking circadian rhythm to health, if steps are not taken to curtail epidemic obesity, our planet may be dealing with the health consequences e.g. type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and arthritic joint pain for many decades to come.

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Article References

Rybnikova NA, Haim A, & Portnov BA (2016). Does artificial light-at-night exposure contribute to the worldwide obesity pandemic? International journal of obesity (2005) PMID: 26795746

Vinogradova IA, Anisimov VN, Bukalev AV, Ilyukha VA, Khizhkin EA, Lotosh TA, Semenchenko AV, & Zabezhinski MA (2010). Circadian disruption induced by light-at-night accelerates aging and promotes tumorigenesis in young but not in old rats. Aging, 2 (2), 82-92 PMID: 20354269

"Careful With That Night Light ! Bright Lights At Night May Cause You To Gain Weight" copyright © 2016 Living Fit, Healthy and Happy_(SM). All Rights Reserved.

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