Adolescents can battle obesity by increasing their sleep duration to ten hours each night, according to a new study.
Researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania found fewer hours of sleep is associated with greater increase in adolescent body mass index (BMI) for participants between 14 and 18-years-old.
The relationship between sleep duration and BMI remained even after adjusting for time spent in front of computer and television screens and being physically active.
The findings suggest that increasing sleep duration to 10 hours per day, especially for those in the upper half of the BMI distribution, could help to reduce the prevalence of adolescent obesity.
The study observed over 1,000 Philadelphia-area high school students from their freshmen through senior high school years.
At six month intervals, study participants were asked to report their sleep patterns. At the same intervals heights and weights were reported and BMIs were calculated.
Based on the results, researchers suggest that increasing sleep from 8 to 10 hours per day at age 18 could result in a 4 per cent reduction in the number of adolescents with a BMI above 25 kg per square metre.
"The psychosocial and physical consequences of adolescent obesity are well documented, yet the rate has more than tripled over the last four decades," said lead author Jonathan A Mitchell, postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Penn Medicine.
"What we found in following these adolescents is that each additional hour of sleep was associated with a reduced BMI for all participants, but the reduction was greater for those with higher BMIs.
"The study is further evidence to support that getting more sleep each night has substantial health benefits during this crucial developmental period," Mitchell said.
The study was published in the journal Pediatrics.
