Charlotte Schoenborn -- a health statistician with the National Health Interview Survey of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- completed a study on sleep duration and its correlation to a variety of adverse health behaviors.

"Among adults 18 and older who sleep between seven to eight hours a night, only 18 percent were current cigarette smokers compared to over 30 percent of adults who slept less than six hours a night and that is a very large difference," Schoenborn said in a statement.

"One of the other very large differences was in obesity and there's a lot of interest now in the association between obesity and in that case -- 22 percent of U.S. adults who slept seven to eight hours were obese compared with a third of those who slept less than six hours.

"The whole health promotion climate now tells us that we know what we need to be doing -- we need to be not smoking, we need to be exercising, we need to be controlling our weight and limiting our alcohol use and all of these things contribute to a healthy lifestyle -- and all are linked to a less sleep," Schoenborn said.