Too little sleep may fatten kids.As childhood obesity childhood obesity Public health Overweight in a child, an average BMI of ≥ 85% for age and sex; ≥ 95% for age and sex is very obese. See Body-mass index, Obesity. Cf Adult obesity. reaches epidemic proportions, parents who are concerned about their children's weight might want to encourage an early-to-bed policy. A new study finds that among the primary-school set, losing sleep is linked with gaining pounds. Earlier studies had correlated weight with sleep patterns but inevitably raised the question of "which came first, the chicken or the egg," explains Julie C. Lumeng of the University of Michigan (body, education) University of Michigan - A large cosmopolitan university in the Midwest USA. Over 50000 students are enrolled at the University of Michigan's three campuses. The students come from 50 states and over 100 foreign countries. in Ann Arbor Ann Arbor, city (1990 pop. 109,592), seat of Washtenaw co., S Mich., on the Huron River; inc. 1851. It is a research and educational center, with a large number of government and industrial research and development firms, many in high-technology fields such as , who led the new study. Her team questioned the parents of 785 children from all over the United States United States, officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. about sleep patterns when their kids were in third grade. Three years later, they questioned the parents again. By sixth grade, 18 percent of the children had become obese. "I expected we'd find that this [sleep link with obesity] was just a bunch of bunk bunk, bunker large storage bin. bunk forage forage, usually ensilage stored in a large storage bunk and made available to cattle or other livestock along a face of the storage. ," says Lumeng, a pediatrician. "But the relationship proved so robust that no matter how we looked at it, we couldn't make it go away." In her team's analysis, obesity didn't track with children's behavior, gender, or race, nor did it correlate with the strictness or laxity laxity /lax·i·ty/ (lak´si-te) 1. slackness or looseness; a lack of tautness, firmness, or rigidity. 2. slackness or displacement in the motion of a joint.lax´ laxity looseness. of parental discipline. Although the average sleep time among all children was 9.5 hours per day throughout the 3 years analyzed, individual sleep times varied widely. In sixth grade, each additional hour above the average sleep time correlated with a 20 percent lower chance of obesity. Sleep patterns were even more strongly linked when the children were in third grade, when every extra hour of sleep was associated with a 40 percent drop in a child's chance of becoming obese by sixth grade. The researchers report their findings in the November Pediatrics.--J.R. |
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