Too much light at night may lead to obesity, study finds

"Persistent exposure to light at night may lead to weight gain, even without changing physical activity or eating more food, according to new research in mice. Researchers found that mice exposed to a relatively dim light at night over eight weeks had a body mass gain that was about 50 percent more than other mice that lived in a standard light-dark cycle."

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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The Snowden Principle

Xenu

The postman always rings twice, rings twice
planettom

Just to throw this out there…

maybe with the lights on, they spend more time looking at their food….

thus.. “Hey…I could eat that.”
cunningamphibian

I thought it was an established fact that the mice are doing the research on us.
mellowknees

So, sleeping with a dim light on is not the cause, it’s being AWAKE AND EATING…?

“…it would suggest that late-night eating might be a particular risk factor for obesity…”

Um, yes, well, DUH.
TooGoodToCheck

I seem to recall some fairly solid research linking sleep deprivation with weight gain. I wonder if the light compromised the rats’ sleep.
- TooGoodToCheck
  
  Bah. nevermind. I just read the article – the mice are nocturnal, so while light at night might mess with their day/night cycle, they would have been awake at night anyway.
IamInnocent

So, it is not the food in the frig tha makes you fat but the light in it?
emo hex

My grandson does not believe this, he says you get fat when you eat the lamp.
G

What about at night, though?

:)
Felton / Moderator

That’s why I only use lite bulbs.
cjp

According to the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, there is growing evidence to exposure to light at night may pose an increased breast cancer risk, especially for shift workers.

Good overview of the data here:
http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/93/20/1513.full
mellowknees

So, what, now night lights make us fat?

Oh, wait, I should be more specific: night lights make MICE fat.
Antinous / Moderator

Maybe fear of the dark keeps you at a higher metabolic rate during sleep.
CC

Read the article. The weight gain in the mice is due to their eating more food due to increased nocturnal activity. When the food was not freely available to the mice but restricted to the same amounts for each group, no weight gain was observed.
- CC
  
  Duh. When the food was restricted to the same *timings* for each group.
- jrtom
  
  Okay, maybe reading the article before posting might have been useful. :P :) Thanks.
Anonymous

Breaking News: A New Study finds that Research causes Obesity and Cancer in Rats! Film at 11:00…
jrtom

Much as I hate the neologism “lite”, I think that Felton must be judged to have won the thread (Smartass Division). :)

I would assume with Antinous that it’s a metabolic thing, but I doubt it’s fear-related. It may be related to the same kinds of light-triggered metabolic changes that (for instance) cause animals whose fur changes color in winter to do so.

If true, and if this is a real effect, then we should probably be able to observe it /in situ/ in (Ant)arctic animals.
Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Too much light at night at night? It might! It might! You’re right, you’re right.