Shhhh! He’s making sure he won’t get fat
The next time Junior resists getting out of bed, you might want to check that impulse to dump a bucket of water on his head. Well-rested kids are less likely to become obese adults.
That’s the conclusion of a new longterm study done at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, and reported in the journal Pediatrics. Researchers followed a thousand people from birth to age 32, and found those who got more rest when young had smaller body-mass indexes as adults. This was true even after controlling for such factors as childhood weight and TV habits.
“Inadequate sleep in childhood appears to have long-lasting consequences,” Dr. Robert John Hancox, the study’s senior author, told Reuters. It’s unclear exactly why, but one theory is that sleep deprivation alters the balance of appetite-stimulating and appetite-suppressing hormones.
Children under the age of 12 should get about 11 hours of sleep a night. Teenagers should have a minimum of about nine hours.
Photo by Husin Sani
