|
 "Sleep deprivation may be associated with increased caloric intake,
and decreased physical activity, resulting in obesity," said senior
study author Dr. Juan Manuel Malacara of the University of
Guanajuato in Leon, Mexico.
To see if extra sleep might make it easier to lose weight,
researchers asked 52 obese teens to eat 500 fewer calories per day
than usual. Then, they chose 25 teens at random to follow a
personalized sleep plan designed to help them get up to an extra
hour of rest at night, while the other 27 kept to their usual sleep
routines.
After four weeks, teens on sleep plans increased their average sleep
time by about 1.2 hours a night and lost an average of 2.1 kilograms
(4.6 pounds). Without the sleep plans, teens only increased their
sleep by about a half hour, on average, and they only lost an
average of 1.2 kg (2.6 lb).
The results suggest that promoting extra sleep may help dieters
succeed with weight loss, Malacara said by email.
"Sleep can influence the secretion of hormones that regulate
appetite, (reducing) craving for food and (making people) more
likely to be successful in cutting calories," said Tianyi Huang of
Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston.
"More sleep will make people feel less sleepy or fatigued during the
day, then people are more likely to work out more, leading to higher
energy expenditure, which is good for weight loss," Huang, who
wasn't involved in the study, said by email. "Sufficient sleep can
also reduce stress, which is known to favor weight gain."
Beyond its small size, another limitation of the study is that
researchers didn't follow the youth for longer to determine whether
sleep might impact their odds of achieving sustainable weight loss.
Researchers also relied on teens to report sleep time in diaries and
didn't objectively measure how much they slept.
The study also didn't look at exercise, or at what teens ate.
[to top of second column] |
In theory, however, better-rested adolescents might be more
conscious about choosing healthier foods and less likely to succumb
to the temptation of high-calorie, high-carb sweets and junk foods,
said Anna Rangan of the University of Sydney in Australia.
"Shorter sleep duration increases the time available for eating,
especially in the evening where sedentary activities, such as
watching television, and snacking on highly palatable and
energy-dense foods are common," Rangan, who wasn't involved in the
study, said by email.
Parents may need to encourage teens to change their evening
routines, said Kristen Knutson, a researcher at Northwestern
University in Chicago who wasn't involved in the study.
"One way to improve the sleep of teens is to avoid bright light at
night, particularly right before bedtime," Knutson said by email.
"This includes light from smart phones and tablets - although
getting teens to put these away at night may be challenging."
The effort is worth it, though, to avoid poor sleep becoming a
lifelong problem, said Stacey Simon of the University of Colorado
Anschutz Medical Campus and Children's Hospital Colorado in Aurora.
"Health habits learned in adolescence often continue into adulthood,
so learning good sleep and eating strategies in adolescence is
critical," Simon, who wasn't involved in the study, said by email.
The longer teens experience obesity, the greater the risk of future
health problems such as cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes,
Simon added.
SOURCE: https://bit.ly/371rU5i Journal of Adolescent Health, online
January 23, 2020.
[© 2020 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2020 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content. |
