Sleep is good for your health, not getting enough sleep increases the risk of developing chronic diseases such as high blood pressure, diabetes, depression, obesity, and cancer and heart attacks. If sleep disorders today affect 20% of the population of industrialized countries, what about adolescent sleep?
Researchers at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health wanted to understand the negative effects of lack of sleep in adolescents.
Scientists studied medical data from 10,000 Americans between the ages of 16 and 21 who participated in a national study between 1995 and 2001.
The results of this study show that one in five adolescents only sleep 6 hours a night. And that these little sleepers have a 20% increased risk of obesity in adulthood.
“Lack of sleep in adolescence can set the stage for obesity later in life,” explains Shakira F. Suglia, assistant professor at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, New York. “But when you’re obese as an adult, it’s much harder to lose weight and keep it off,” she says.
“We want to send a message to parents. They need to make sure their teens get more than eight hours of sleep a night,” Prof Suglia said. “Because a good night’s sleep is not only beneficial to their concentration at school it also enables them to become healthy adults “.
This study confirms a Finnish study which revealed that a lack of sleep made children fat. Indeed, their research carried out on 1250 schoolchildren aged 10-11 years showed that the children who have the shortest time of sleep and who feel tired during the day are those who consume the most high-calorie foods.
Some rules for better sleep
It is important to have “sleep patterns” by going to bed at the same time each night and getting up at the same time each morning. It is recommended that you eat light dinner, avoid caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol before bed, and do not doze off in front of a screen.
The National Sleep Foundation suggests that children aged 5 to 10 get 10 to 11 hours of sleep a day, that teenagers (10 to 17 years old) 8.5 to 9.5 hours, and adults 7 to 9 hours.
