Shorter sleep durations may increase genetic risks for obesity

A recent study found that the heritability of self-reported, habitual sleep duration was 32 percent, and shared environmental influences on sleep duration were negligible. Longer sleep duration was associated with decreased body mass index. Behavioral genetic modeling found that the heritability of self-reported BMI when sleep duration equaled seven hours was more than twice as large as the heritability of BMI when sleep duration equaled nine hours. The study involved 1,811 pairs of identical and fraternal twins.

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