Telling adolescents to get enough sleep can sometimes be a tall order, but a new study in The Journal of Pediatrics reminds us just how important a good night's sleep can be. It suggests obese youths who do not get adequate sleep may increase their risk for developing diabetes, heart disease and stroke.
The researchers, from the University of Michigan Health System and Baylor University, say the combination of inadequate sleep and obesity has been linked to raised risks of cardiovascular diseases in adults and younger children.
But this link has been unclear in adolescents, a group notorious for lack of sleep and whose obesity and overweight proportion totals 30% in the US.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), adolescent obesity has quadrupled over the past 30 years. The percentage of youths between the ages of 12 and 19 who were obese increased from 5% in 1980 to almost 21% in 2012.
The CDC note that obese adolescents are more likely to have prediabetes, joint problems, sleep apnea and poor self-esteem. Over the long term, they are more likely to be obese adults, putting them at risk for heart disease, stroke, cancer and osteoarthritis.
Armed with this knowledge, the researchers from this latest study - led by Heidi IglayReger, supervisor of the Physical Activity Laboratory at the Michigan Metabolomics and Obesity Center - studied 37 obese youths between the ages of 11 and 17.
Low sleep levels are a 'significant cardiometabolic risk factor'
The team measured the adolescents' risk factors for type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, which included fasting cholesterol, blood sugar, waist circumference, body mass index (BMI) and blood pressure. They used this data to create a continuous cardiometabolic risk score.
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