Nursery World - Does sleep deprivation make children fatter?

Young children could be at greater risk of obesity if they do not get enough sleep, a study suggests.

Sleep deprivation made the preschoolers in the research group hungrier, according to the American study.

Increased calorie intake is possibly a reaction to the higher number burned keeping them awake, experts have hypothesised.

Assistant Professor Monique LeBourgeois, lead author of the research at Colorado University Boulder, said, ‘We found that sleep loss increased the dietary intake of preschoolers on both the day of and the day after restricted sleep.’

Researchers studied ten three- and four- year-olds who were all regular afternoon nappers.

Mimicking real-life patterns of lost sleep, they were deprived of roughly three hours on one day.

They had no afternoon nap and were kept up for about two hours past their normal bedtime, before being woken on time the next morning.

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