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The Light Might Make You Heavy
Rambo Tribble writes: "Writing in the American Journal of Epidemiology, researchers have found that sleeping with high ambient light levels may contribute to obesity (abstract). In a survey of 113,000 women, a high correlation was found between higher bedroom light levels and increased propensity to be overweight or obese. Excess light in the sleeping environment has long been known to adversely affect melatonin production and circadian rhythms. It is posited that such an interference with the 'body clock' may be behind these results. Although there is not yet enough evidence to call this a smoking gun, as one researcher put it, 'Overall this study points to the importance of darkness.'"
Anakin Skywalker spent a lot of time with the dark side and look how much body mass he was able to lose.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
Yes, because a lack of sleep is the #1 reason why people don't exercise and eat right.
Give me a break.
Maybe it's not the #1 reason, but why couldn't it be a significant reason that we might consider?
People who don't sleep enough or don't get enough "restful" sleep often have all sorts of problems -- increased stress, difficulty in learning and retaining information, impaired judgment -- and it's correlated with all sorts of things from depression to various chronic health problems. If the lack of sleep itself can't lead to obesity, surely some set of these factors (some of which are known to correlate with obesity, like stress and depression) can contribute to it.
Next up, the new diet craze for lazy people. Blackout blinds.
I get you don't think this is useful, but why do you have to make stupid remarks? Obviously obesity rates have been rising significantly in the past few decades. There are a number of fairly obvious likely causes for this trend, but there may be many minor ones that have changed in recent decades that could be contributing -- like, for example, the amount of "light pollution" these days, which probably contributes to ambient light in bedrooms (along with decreased numbers of people in rural areas where light pollution is scarce), coupled with increased tendencies to leave various electronic devices on all the time.
Who cares if it's the "#1 reason why people don't exercise and eat right"? If it's in the top 20, it can probably be helpful to know it, and for some people, it could actually be leading to other health problems, including obesity.
I know there's this common assumption that diet and exercise is only about willpower, but the reality of life is that there are all sorts of psychological and physical factors which can make it easier or harder to pursue healthy habits. And being exhausted a lot of the time is not generally conducive to such habits. Obviously for many people blackout blinds are not the magic ticket to a thin body -- but combined with some other things, better rest could make it easier for some people to live in a more healthy manner.
This article makes an overly simplistic suggestion that sleeping in a darker room will magically help one shed weight.
[Citation needed]
I read TFA and the the abstract to the actual study, and at no point do I see a "suggestion that sleeping in a darker room will magically help one shed weight."
To the contrary, from TFA: "[The researchers] caution there is not enough evidence to advise people to buy thicker curtains or turn off lights." AND "[T]here is not sufficient evidence to know if making your room darker would make any difference to your weight." AND " Dr Matthew Lam, from the charity, commented: 'It's too early to suggest that sleeping in the dark will help prevent obesity, a known risk factor for breast cancer, but the association is certainly interesting.' "
About the closest TFA comes to what you said is: "Prof Derk-Jan Dijk, from the Surrey Sleep Centre, said there would be no harm in trying to make bedrooms darker."
In other words, TFA includes at least THREE explicit disclaimers saying the exact opposite of what you said it suggested, and one suggestion that "Well, it probably wouldn't hurt..."
As someone that has lost over a hundred pounds, I'll tell you this: it is making good food choices, counting calories, and getting physical activity.
Of course. But if you are better rested, for example, there's less chance that fatigue will live to poor judgment, stress, depression, etc., all of which are known to contribute to obesity. Sure, ultimately what you say is true, but that doesn't mean that changing some other environmental factor might not make it easier to make good food choices, count calories, exercise, etc.
Certainly adequate rest is helpful but there is no credible study to suggest that someone that is doing these things yet doesn't get enough sleep is obese.
Well, if you actually read the linked abstract, you'd see there actually ARE animal studies suggesting precisely this in the second sentence: "In animal studies, there is convincing evidence that light exposure causes weight gain, even when calorie intake and physical activity are held constant."
So, this study is a human study suggesting something that has already been found in animal studies. As the researchers point out, they controlled for a lot of confounding factors, but there might be others -- nevertheless, as they say, it seems like enough evidence to justify further research.
As you say, "The causes of obesity are a multitude of factors" -- why do you insist on arguing so strenuously against the possibility that this might be one factor, even if a minor one?