Various investigations have shown that sleeping poorly harms health and increases the chances of suffering from diseases, such as atherosclerosis, stroke, or dementia, but in the case of children and adolescents, lack of sleep can also affect their proper development, your mental health and behavior, or your school performance. Now, in addition, a new study has found that adolescents who do not get enough sleep consume more sugar than those who rest well, which increases their risk of obesity.
Most teens don’t get the recommended amount of sleep for their age. In the United States, where the aforementioned study has been carried out, 73% of high school students sleep less than the eight to 10 hours they should sleep each night, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. In Spain, data from the PASOS 2019 study by the Gasol Foundation show that adolescents aged 15 and 16 sleep fewer hours (7.78 hours) during the week than is recommended “for full physical, psychological and social development”.
New research from Brigham Young University (BYU), conducted at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and published in Sleep, indicates that lack of sleep also increases the risk of adolescents gaining weight and develop other cardiometabolic diseases because when they sleep less their eating habits are worse.
Short-sleeper teens ate an extra 12 grams of sugar each day, which could add up to more than five pounds of extra sugar each year
“Reduced sleep increases the risk that adolescents will eat more carbohydrates and added sugars and drink more sugar-sweetened beverages than when they are getting a healthy amount of sleep,” said Dr. Kara Duraccio, professor of clinical and developmental psychology. BYU and main author of the work.
Increased risk of obesity in adolescents who sleep little
The researchers analyzed the sleeping and eating patterns of 93 adolescents during two sleep conditions: spending six and a half hours each night in bed for one week (short sleep) and spending nine and a half hours each night in bed for another week ( healthy sleep). Factors such as caloric intake, the amount of macronutrients, the types of foods and the glycemic load of the foods the adolescents ate were measured.
It was found that adolescents who slept little ate more foods that made it more likely that blood sugar levels would rise rapidly, such as those high in carbohydrates and added sugars, or sugary drinks, compared to those who ate when enjoying healthy sleep. These changes in eating habits occurred especially in the late afternoon (after 9:00 p.m.). Teens also ate fewer fruits and vegetables throughout the day when they got little sleep, compared to when their sleep was healthy.
Specifically, the results showed that teens who were short sleepers ate an extra 12 grams of sugar each day, and since most teens don’t get enough sleep during the 180 nights of the school year, an extra 12 grams of added sugar each day could more than two kilos of extra sugar every year.
Sleep health should be incorporated into all prevention and intervention modules for childhood obesity
“What’s interesting is that less sleep didn’t make teens eat more than their healthy-sleeping peers; both groups consumed about the same number of calories from food. But less sleep caused teens to eat more junk food,” Duraccio said. “We suspect that tired teens are looking for quick bursts of energy to keep going until they can go to bed, so they choose foods that are high in carbohydrates and added sugars.”
“We know that pediatric obesity is an epidemic and we’ve focused on a lot of interventions to try to address it, but sleep is not one of the things that researchers tend to focus on,” Duraccio said. “If we are really trying to discover preventive strategies or interventions to get adolescents to optimal weight, getting enough sleep at the right time should be a priority in our efforts.”
Duraccio acknowledges that it is difficult for adolescents to maintain a healthy sleep schedule because they are subject to rigorous academic schedules and tend to have a large number of extracurricular activities, which, together with having to get up early to go to school, has the consequence that their sleep patterns are brief and inconvenient and this becomes a habit.
“It’s human nature to think that when we have a long to-do list, sleep should be the first thing to cut or the easiest thing to eliminate,” he adds. “We don’t recognize that getting enough sleep helps to better accomplish the list of pending tasks. Sleep health should be incorporated into all prevention and intervention modules for childhood obesity.”
.
