OBESITY TEENAGERS

Too little sleep bad for teenagers' diets
CHICAGO
Teenagers who sleep less than eight hours a night on weeknights eat more fatty foods and snacks than those who get more than eight hours of sleep a night, US researchers said.They said getting too little sleep can result in chronic changes in the diet that can increase the risk of obesity, especially in girls.
Prior studies have shown that too little sleep can lead to weight gain, but the new findings show where the extra calories come from. Increasing intake of fatty foods, which are typically highin calories, can increase the overall daily caloric intake, and if it happens routinely, it can lead to excess fat.
''The demonstration of chronically altered dietary patternsin adolescents with shorter sleep provides insight into why shorter sleep has been associated with obesity in prior experimental and observational studies,'' said Dr Susan Redlineof Brigham and Women's Hospital and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, whose study appears in the journal Sleep.
Redline and colleagues studied 240 teenagers aged 16 to 19 taking part in an ongoing sleep study. Their sleep wasmonitored at home by a wrist band device and food intake wasmeasured with interviews done by trained staff. They found that teenagers who slept less than eight hourson weeknights consumed 2.2 per cent more calories from fats and3.0 per cent fewer calories from carbohydrates than teenagerswho slept eight hours or more. ''The relative increase in fat consumption among shortersleepers by 2.2 per cent per day chronically may contribute tocumulative increases in energy consumption that would beexpected to increase risk for obesity and cardiovasculardisease,'' Redline said in a statement. But the risk may be easily reversed. The team found that each added hour of sleep lowered theodds of eating a high amount of calories from snacks by anaverage of 21 per cent. Curiously, when they looked by gender, they found theresults were statistically significant in girls, but not boys. While it is not clear why, the team said it may be thatteenage girls are more likely to turn to food for emotionalreasons than boys, but that needs to be studied. Only 34 per cent of the teenagers in the study slept for anaverage of eight hours or more. According to the AmericanAcademy of Sleep Medicine, teenagers need at least 9 hours ofsleep to feel alert and rested.
Sep 2010