View article

Objective:

To study the inter-relationships between sleeping hours, working hours and obesity in subjects from a working population.

Research design:

A cross-sectional observation study under the ‘Better Health for Better Hong Kong’Campaign, which is a territory-wide health awareness and promotion program.

Subjects:

4793 subjects (2353 (49.1%) men and 2440 (50.9%) women). Their mean age (±sd) was 42.4±8.9 years (range 17–83 years, median 43.0 years). Subjects were randomly selected using computer-generated codes in accordance to the distribution of occupational groups in Hong Kong.

Results:

The mean daily sleeping time was 7.06±1.03 h (women vs men: 7.14±1.08 h vs 6.98±0.96 h, P< 0.001). Increasing body mass index (BMI) was associated with reducing number of sleeping hours and increasing number of working hours reaching significance in the whole group as well as among male subjects …