Poor sleeping habits may not just leave a person tired during the day, it could also pose a danger to their health, a new study finds.
Researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, found that people who sleep for less than four hours per night are at an increased risk of developing harmful fat lining their organs.
Sleep deprivation can cause people who are relatively healthy to develop 'visceral' fat in the belly, which can eventually cause issues for the heart and other organs in the body over time.
The research has grave implications, as more and more people are spending less time sleeping as a result of the prevalence of smart phones, longer working hours, and other factors.
Researchers from the Mayo Clinic found that people who are getting four hours of sleep or less every night are developing dangerous 'visceral' fat that can lead to a variety of heart and organ conditions
'Our findings show that shortened sleep, even in young, healthy and relatively lean subjects, is associated with an increase in calorie intake, a very small increase in weight, and a significant increase in fat accumulation inside the belly,' Dr Vinred Somers, the study's lead investigator, said in a statement.
Researchers, who published their findings Tuesday in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, gathered data from 12 healthy, non-obese, people between the ages of 19 and 39 for the study.
After a four day period of acclimation where subjects were prepared for a new sleep schedule, they were subject to a strict sleep schedule for 14 days.
One group was only given a four hour window to sleep every night, while the other was given nine hours.
The research team measured energy intake and expenditure, weight, body composition and fat distribution on each subject after the period was complete.
Those sleeping of a limited schedule were found to have gained more weight than their peers in the nine hour group.
Overall body fat levels stayed equal across both groups, but people who were on the four hour sleep schedule had high levels of visceral fat in their stomachs.
'Normally, fat is preferentially deposited subcutaneously or under the skin. However, the inadequate sleep appears to redirect fat to the more dangerous visceral
