Childhood obesity and sleep linked in study
As a child I was skinny until I was five years
old, then became overweight. Not astoundingly large, but enough that I was called fat by the other kids and didn't make
the cheerleading squad. My pediatrician - pediatrician - told me, "Fat little girls grow
up to be fat ladies." You can bet this all made me miserable for most of my young life.So as a parent I'm always interested in theories and studies about the possible causes of childhood obesity (besides, oh, all those Pringles and cheeseburgers I ate?). Several studies have focused on a possible link between breastfeeding and obesity, with varying results, and I did breastfeed as long as I could partially due to this possible link.
Now a new study from Universite Laval suggests lack of sleep is correlated with children's obesity. The study of 422 students found that those who sleep less were 3.5 times more likely to be overweight. No other factor they studied, including parental obesity, level of physical activity, or even time spent in front of the TV or (ahem) computer, showed anywhere near the correlation that too little sleep did.
Of course, correlation doesn't necessarily mean causation. But it is leading scientists to create hypotheses about how sleep and weight relate. One scientist noted, "It's ironic that part of the solution to obesity might lie in sleep, the most sedentary of all human activities." I agree. But with a baby in the house I have learned that more sleep leads to more sleep, and that lots of counterintuitive things are actually true.
The researchers hazard a guess at a prescription for avoiding childhood obesity that includes plenty of movement, and plenty of sleep.
[Photo from tannie annie on flickr.]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
mamaloo 4-02-2006 @ 1:42PM
They say that this is true for adults, so why not children? I'd absolutely believe this.
When I had my son I started putting on massive amounts of weight, without actually eating all that much more and without changing my activity level much (in fact, by about his third week, I started getting out of the house and walking around, trying to stave off boredom, almost everyday, resulting in lots of physical activity for me).
The big difference for me: nursing on demand to an infant who nursed nearly constantly, which exxacerbated my insomnia. For well over a year, I hardly slept more than five hours combined in any single day. I'm pretty sure this had a significant impact on my massive weight gain.
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Missy 4-02-2006 @ 4:10PM
I think this is true to some extent. I think if you get fewer than 7 hours of sleep a night, your body acts as if it's "under stress". When you're under stress, you eat more and gain more weight.
I have the opposite problem, though, in that I sleep too much, which I think is just as bad because you're not as active.
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A'tuin 4-02-2006 @ 10:35PM
Wow, I have never heard of this. I am a chronic insomniac, have been since I was about ten or so, and I'm also morbidly obese. I'm one of those people that just can't seem to lose weight no matter what diet or exercise regime I try. So maybe it's the insomnia.
Huh, who woulda thunk it? Definitely, I'm going to have to watch this in our child. She's already having a hard time sleeping because of teething. Thanks for the info.
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