Sleep On This

How important is your family's sleep to your child's health? Recent research indicates that insufficient sleep – for both parent and child – can increase the risk of childhood obesity.

The first study reported that more parental sleep is related to more child sleep, which is related to decreased child obesity.

“Parents should make being well-rested a family value and a priority. Sleep routines in a family affect all the members of the household, not just children; we know that parents won't get a good night's sleep unless and until their preschool children are sleeping,” said Barbara H. Fiese, director of the University of Illinois's Family Resiliency Center and co-author of the study, which was published in the April 2014 issue of Frontiers in Psychology.

The effects of sleeplessness go beyond just being tired the next day. Studies show that moms, dads and their children are likely to gain weight as they lose sleep, Fiese said.

Fiese suggests limiting your children's exposure to TV and other electronic devices to two hours a day and turning them off a half-hour before bedtime (needless to say, children should not have televisions in their bedrooms); spending some time in a calming, predictable routine, such as giving the child a bath or reading together; and making sure preschoolers are in bed in time to get the recommended 10 hours of sleep a night.

Then adults should follow a calming routine themselves.

Research indicates that insufficient sleep can increase the risk of childhood obesity.

“We're learning more and more about how important it is to unplug for a half-hour or so before we go to bed. At a certain time, turn off your electronic devices – even e-books – and engage in whatever soothing ritual helps you to relax enough to sleep,” Fiese said.

Although the mechanism hasn't yet been identified, Fiese said that restorative sleep is thought to help regulate our metabolism. Her recent study showed that sleep is a protective factor in lowering the incidence of obesity in parents and preschool children being overweight.

In the study, socioeconomic characteristics were assessed in relation to protective routines and prevalence of being obese or overweight for 337 preschool children and their parents. The routines assessed in parents included adequate sleep (over seven hours) and family mealtime routine. The four protective routines assessed in children were adequate sleep (10 or more hours per night), family mealtime routine, limiting screen-viewing time to less than two hours a day, and not having a bedroom TV.

The only significant individual protective factor against obesity or children being overweight was getting adequate sleep. Children who did not get enough sleep had a greater risk for being overweight than children who engaged in at least three of the protective routines regularly, even after controlling for parents' BMI and socio-demographic characteristics, Fiese said.

But the researchers also learned that the number of hours a parent sleeps is related to how much sleep children are getting, so that a parent's sleep has an effect on the likelihood that their children will be overweight or obese.

The second study from investigators at MassGeneral Hospital for Children, or MGHfC, found compelling evidence that children who consistently received less than the recommended hours of sleep during infancy and early childhood had increases in both obesity and adiposity, or overall body fat, at age 7. The study was published in the June issue of Pediatrics.

“Our study found convincing evidence that getting less than recommended amounts of sleep across early childhood is an independent and strong risk factor for obesity and adiposity,” said Elsie Taveras, chief of General Pediatrics at MGHfC and lead author of the Pediatrics paper. “Contrary to some published studies, we did not find a particular ‘critical period' for the influence of sleep duration on weight gain. Instead, insufficient sleep at any time in early childhood had adverse effects.”

The MGHfC study analyzed data from Project Viva, a long-term investigation of the health impacts of several factors during pregnancy and after birth. Information used in this study was gathered from mothers at in-person interviews when their children were around 6 months, 3 years and 7 years old, and from questionnaires completed when the children were ages 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6.

Among other questions, the mothers were asked how much time their children slept, both at night and during daytime naps, during an average day. Curtailed sleep was defined as less than 12 hours per day from ages 6 months to 2 years, less than 10 hours per day for ages 3 and 4, and less than 9 hours per day from age 5 to 7.

Overall, children with the lowest amount of sleep had the highest levels of all body measurements reflecting obesity and adiposity, including abdominal fat, which is considered to be particularly hazardous. The association was consistent at all ages, indicting there was no critical period for the interaction between sleep and weight. Lower sleep scores were more common in homes with lower incomes, less maternal education, and among racial and ethnic minorities.