We all know that getting enough sleep is important for a child’s development, but a new study reveals that it may be a vital factor in keeping our kids at a healthy weight as well. The study, published on Monday in the “Archive of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine,” found that children under the age of five who did not get at least ten hours of sleep a night were more than twice as likely to be overweight later in childhood.
Janice F. Bell, the paper’s lead author, an assistant professor at the University of Washington, and her team analyzed data from 1,930 children under 14. Their data included a detailed diary from two random days, in which parents recorded the amount of time their children spent doing different activities, including sleeping.
This study joins a host of others that suggest that getting enough sleep at any age is important to healthy weight regulation. Whether it’s simple exhaustion preventing a tired kid from being as active or whether sleep actually affects hormones that influence hunger patterns, it’s clear – they need to get their beauty sleep, and so do we.
“What we’re saying is that adequate sleep at age 0 to 5 is probably more important than we think,” Dr. Bell told the New York Times, “it’s a modifiable risk factor — it’s something we can change.”
