Dunedin, New Zealand — Parents aren’t getting enough sleep when their kids aren’t getting enough sleep. Apparently, the other thing these sleep-deprived kids aren’t getting enough of is food. There seems to be
Scientists at the University of Otago in New Zealand have revealed that children who don’t get enough sleep consume more calories than those who are well rested. of children reported eating 96 more calories from junk food and slightly less healthy food than others. After factoring in the extra calories, the young man burned up by staying up longer and ate 63 more calories in a day.
Small children who lost the most sleep had even greater variation in what they ate and how much junk food they consumed at mealtimes. In the evening, I started eating more healthy foods during exercise.
The results were maintained when adjusted for the amount of exercise the children did and the amount of time they were sitting. So these factors can be discounted as explanations for the difference.To help parents get a good night’s sleep, a team of researchers from New Zealand considered encouraging their children to take a bath or read before bed. says it should.
Why does lack of sleep lead to unhealthy eating in children?
It has long been known that sleep deprivation is associated with childhood obesity, and the cause is likely to be diet. bottom.
Due to the limited number of hours in a day, less sleep inevitably leads to increased sedentary time and physical activity, but previous studies have not been able to explain these simultaneous changes in daily behavior. There was no trend.
For this study, the team analyzed data from 105 children aged 8 to 12 who participated in the Daily Rest, Diet, and Activity Monitoring (DREAM) clinical trial. Just over three of his fifths (61%) of the participants were of healthy weight and the rest were overweight or obese.
The children went to bed one hour earlier than usual for one week and one hour later than usual for one week. During the week in between, they slept at their usual hours. They wore the wrist device day and night to track the time spent sleeping, sitting, light exercise, and moderate-to-vigorous exercise.
Participants were asked to recall what they ate and drank in the past 24 hours twice during sleep-deprived weeks. They were asked about how much energy and ultra-processed foods they ate, their intake of core healthy foods and unhealthy snacks.
The researchers estimated the association between sleep deprivation and its effects on children’s appetite, independent of sedentary time and physical activity, and also found that eating was associated with changes in sedentary time and physical activity. The 82 children with complete data lost 48 minutes of sleep each night, but also lost 8 minutes of waking time each night.
They spent almost all of this extra time during the day sitting or doing light exercise such as walking. They spent only 4 minutes on him in the more strenuous exercise.
“Together, these findings suggest that changes in dietary intake, rather than reduced physical activity, explain why not getting enough sleep in childhood increases the risk of being overweight and obese. statement. “Improving sleep isn’t usually the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about weight management, but it might be a good option.”
The findings were presented at the International Conference on Obesity in Melbourne, Australia.
South West News Service writer Gwyn Wright contributed to this report.