Sleep an Important Component of Childhood Obesity Prevention Efforts, Study Says

A study in the August issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry finds that children who do not get enough sleep are more likely to be overweight than their well-rested peers, suggesting that sleep duration should be emphasized in future childhood obesity prevention efforts, HealthDay News reports. To determine how sleep influences pediatric weight status, researchers from the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic in Pittsburgh assessed the sleep patterns of 335 children ages 7 to 17. Researchers also measured participants' body mass indices (BMIs) at the beginning of the study, finding that 13.4 percent of participants were overweight and 14.6 percent were at risk of becoming overweight. According to the data, children who were overweight slept about 22 minutes less per night, had shorter periods of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, less eye activity during REM sleep and a longer wait before the first REM period than normal weight children. In further analysis, the researchers determined that a one-hour reduction in daily REM sleep nearly tripled a child's odds for overweight and obesity. The authors conclude that the findings "demonstrate an important relationship between REM sleep and high BMI and obesity," and suggest that future family- and school-based interventions designed to improve sleep duration could help to reduce the prevalence of childhood overweight and obesity HealthDay News/Yahoo! News, 8/4/08; Bankhead, MedPage Today, 8/4/08; Liu et al., Archives of General Psychiatry, August 2008 [subscription required]).