According to a new study, Children who got less sleep than necessary in comparison to their peers end up weighing more. Dr. Teatske Altenburg, who is affiliated with the EMGO Institute for Health and Care Research, and her team conducted the study that led to the findings According to the National Sleep Foundation, children between the ages of 10 and 12 should get 8.5 to 11 hours. However, because of distractions such as video games and computers for example, many kids are not getting the ideal amount of sleep per night.
Dr. Altenburg and her colleagues discovered that children from the ages of 10 to 12 that slept under seven hours per night during the school week, on average, had a waistline about .8in bigger than their peers who got over ten hours of rest per weeknight. Often times, kids (Adults, we know some of us are guilty of this too!) try to catch up on sleep during the weekend. But, this tactic may not be as effective as we would like to think. Altenburg commented on it, saying, “We found that weekday sleep duration seems more important in decreasing their risk of being overweight and obese than weekend sleep duration.” She continued, “Our results also suggest that longer sleep durations during the weekend might not be suitable to compensate for shortened sleep during the week.” Getting enough sleep is key to formation of new memories, and cognitive abilities—two things that are immensely important for young children.
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