A good night's sleep reduces child obesity

Whitney Everett/A good night’s sleep reduces risk of child obesity/February 2, 2008/post 4

The article that I chose to talk about this week is from Washington DC. It talks about a study that has been conducted about child obesity and the fact that studies show that children that get a good nights sleep is less likely to be obese rather than children that do not. It says that each extra hour of sleep cuts a childs risk of being overweight by nine percent. It also contrasts this by saying that children that get the least sleep had a ninety two percent increase in being overweight than children that got sleep. Research recommends that children under five should sleep eleven hours or more a day, while children ages five to ten should get ten or more hours of sleep, and children older than ten should get nine or more a day.

I think this article was very interesting because I never knew that sleep had an impact on your weight. I think that children as young as ten should get an adequate amount of sleep a night or they are not going to be well rested for the next day and this is going to cause problems with them during the day. I never thought about weight problems and what sleep can do with this issue. I would like to learn more about this because this is the first time I have heard about it. In my opinion, I would think that a lot of sleep for a child would not be good for the child’s weight because they are not active and are not using calories while they are sleeping.

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jzG2XlwdhTU3HmVpYV7sCddy9Wcg