Teen sleeplessness piles on risk for obesity

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-08/cums-tsp082014.php

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 20-Aug-2014

Contact: Timothy Paul
Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health
Teen sleeplessness piles on risk for obesity

Teenagers who don't get enough sleep may wake up to worse consequences than nodding off during chemistry class. According to new research, risk of being obese by age 21 was 20 percent higher among 16-year-olds who got less than six hours of sleep a night, compared with their peers who slumbered more than eight hours. (The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends nine to ten hours of sleep for teenagers.)

Researchers at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University and the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Public Health are the first to examine the effect of sleeplessness on obesity in teenagers over time, providing the strongest evidence yet that lack of sleep raises risk for an elevated BMI. Results appear in Journal of Pediatrics.

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