The battle of the bulge may start by placing your child's head on their pillow more consistently.
A new study in the journal Pediatrics says obese children are less likely to catch-up on missed sleepon weekends. The combination of less sleep and a changing sleep pattern was associated with adverse metabolic outcomes.
Researchers observed children slept an average of 8 hours per night, regardless of their weight categorization. What they found was a trend between sleep and weight. For obese children, sleep duration was shorterand showed more variability on weekends, compared with school days.
For overweight children, a mixed sleep pattern emerged.The presence of high variance in sleep duration or short sleep duration was more likely associated with altered insulin, low-densitylipo protein, and high-sensitivity C-reactive protein plasma levels. Children whose sleep patterns were at the lower end of sleep duration, particularly in the presence of irregular sleep schedules, exhibited the greatest health risk.
Karen Spruyt, PhD and David Gozal, MD, of the Department of Pediatrics, Comer Children's Hospital and Pritzker School of Medicine, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, and Dennis L. Molfese, PhD, Birth Defects Center, University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky completed the study.
Their goal was to explore the effects of duration and regularity of sleep schedules on BMI and the impact on metabolic regulation in children. They recruited 308 children ages 4 to 10 and assessed them with wrist actigraphs for 1 week in a cross-sectionalstudy, along with BMI assessment. Fasting morning plasma levels of glucose, insulin, lipids, and high-sensitivity C-reactiveprotein also were measured for a subsample.
Scientists now say educational campaigns for families may help decrease obesity rates in kids.
Insomnia significantly affects 29 percent of children seen by child psychiatrists, according to a national survey released last summer.
Roughly one-quarter of these patients with insomnia as a "major problem symptom" receive sleep medications, although none are FDA approved for pediatric use, found Judith A. Owens, MD, of Rhode Island Hospital and Brown University in Providence, R.I., according to MedPageToday.
Results from the survey of 1,273 members of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry appeared in the August 2010 issue of Sleep Medicine.
Sleep is vital to a child's growth. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends these daily sleep guidelines for kids:
- 0-2 mon 10.5-18 hours
- 2-12 mon 12-15 hours
- 1-3 yrs 12-14 hours
- 3-5 yrs 11-13 hours
- 5-12 yrs 10-11 hours
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