Does Short Sleep Lead to Obesity Among Children and Adolescents? Current Understanding and Implications

Abstract

Childhood obesity continues to be a major public health concern in the United States. This work reviews the current understanding of the relationship between sleep duration and obesity among children and adolescents. A systematic search was conducted for papers published between January 2000 and July 2013 using keywords: (sleep) and (overweight or obesity or obese or body mass index or BMI or adiposity or body fat or fat) and (children or child or youth or teen or pediatric or adolescent or paediatric or childhood or adolescence or boy or girl). Reference lists of relevant articles and reviews or meta-analysis articles were checked to identify additional studies. Only empirical work and longitudinal studies that focused on children and adolescents were included in this review. The search identified 22 longitudinal studies. The majority of the reviewed studies support the presence of an inverse relationship between sleep duration and obesity. However, in some studies the relationship was not significant in adjusted analyses. Differences as a function of age and gender were also noted. Despite more than a decade of research, the debate on the association between sleep duration and obesity continues. Further research with repeated assessments, valid objective measures, and better control of potential confounding variables is warranted.

Association between sleep duration and cardiac structure in youths at risk for metabolic syndrome

“…Therefore, some additional mediating factors warrant to be considered, such as sympathetic tone, other peptides, transmitters, and their receptors controlling cardiovascular function. For instance, sleep has a beneficial effect on the sympathetic nervous system36. In clinical study, Zhang et al .…”

The mediating role of sleep in the relationship between Indigenous status and body mass index in Australian school‐aged children

“…Short sleep hinders carbohydrate metabolism, increases insulin resistance and decreases glucose tolerance . Short sleep also stimulates appetite, increases food intake and visceral fat via increased cortisol levels and the down‐regulation of leptin and upregulation of ghrelin . A recently proposed cascade model of paediatric obesity identified that despite a small effect size, short sleep duration is a key factor in the development of obesity in school‐aged children .…”

Southeastern United States Parental Perspectives to Promote Adolescent Sleep Health

“…With over a decade of research, scholars have established possible associations between sleep duration and adolescent obesity, yet further research is warranted (Thind et al, 2014). When using various ages and waves of adolescents, short sleep durations accompanied with increased television watching and electronic activities were found to be possible risk factors for obesity according to Magee, Caputi, and Iverson (2014).…”