Less Sleep May Mean More Weight for Kids
Written by:
Karen Barrow –
The less time your child spends asleep, the more likely he or she may become overweight, new research shows. In fact, sleeping fewer than ten hours a night may make a child significantly more likely to become overweight than a child who sleeps away half the day. Lack of sleep seems to play a larger role in weight gain than time spent watching television and lack of physical activity.
Researchers from the University of Laval in Quebec looked at the lifestyles, habits, body mass index and waist size of 422 children between the ages of 5 and 10. In all, 20 percent of boys and 24 percent of girls in the study were overweight. After analyzing the data, researchers discovered that those children who slept fewer than 10 hours a night were 3.5 times more likely to be overweight than those who slept more than 12 hours a night. Other factors that may contribute to weight gain, including time spent watching television, parental education, family income and regular physical activity, were found to have much lower impact on a child becoming overweight.
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