Teenagers who ordinarily get fewer than eight hours of sleep a night may be driven to eating fatty, high-calorie foods to make up for the lack of rest, according to CNN. The study which found these results was recently published in the science journal Sleep, which claims that "individuals getting insufficient amounts of sleep are more likely to be obese and gain weight over time."

While sleep patterns weren’t found to contribute to weight gain, the findings did show that teens who got fewer than eight hours of rest were 18 percent more likely to have weight problems.

One theory for this result is that not sleeping enough can lower the production of the hormones that regulate appetite, known as leptin and ghrelin, which will in turn trigger a greater desire for snacks.

Kristen Knutson, an assistant professor of pulmonary and critical care medicine, claims that social and cultural factors may also affect the differences in weight gain. She says that, if a family doesn’t stock a household with unhealthy snacks, teens aren’t as likely to have an unhealthy diet.

This data compiled was part of a larger sleep study, which found that all of the 240 teenagers studied slept around 7.5 hours a night, which is far less than the nine hours that is recommended by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine for adolescents.