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June 10, 2008Sleep problems linked to obesity, lower quality of life in school-aged children |
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From EurekAlert! - Breaking News: A research abstract that will be presented on Tuesday at SLEEP 2008, the 22nd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies (APSS), finds an increased prevalence of sleep problems among school-aged children who are obese and an association between increased weight and lower quality of life. According to the results, children who were obese had poorer scores for sleep onset delay, sleep-disordered breathing, sleep duration, and daytime sleepiness, compared to children who were overweight or healthy weight. Weight category was a significant predictor of parent-reported physical, psychosocial, and total quality of life scores, as well as child-reported physical functioning scores. "In this study, sleep and weight each contributed unique variance for quality of life scores, thus indicating the need to evaluate daytime functioning in children with both obesity and sleep problems," said Davis. Obesity can increase children's risk for developing obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), a sleep-related breathing disorder that causes your body to stop breathing during sleep. Set aside 10 to 30 minutes to get your child ready to go to sleep each night. Keep your children from TV programs, movies, and video games that are not right for their age. The annual SLEEP meeting brings together an international body of 5,000 leading researchers and clinicians in the field of sleep medicine to present and discuss new findings and medical developments related to sleep and sleep disorders. More than 1,000 research abstracts will be presented at the SLEEP meeting, a joint venture of the AASM and the Sleep Research Society.
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