Your Health

The importance of sleep

Sleep - or the lack of it - has a direct connection to the health of young people.

According to a recent study, the pattern of "early to bed and early to rise" seems to help keep kids leaner and more physically active than their night-owl peers, even with the same total amount of sleep.

Body weight and the use of free time over a four-day period were compared in 2,200 nine- to 16-year-olds. Those who went to bed late and got up late were 1.5 times more likely to be obese than those who went to bed early and got up early.

Further, late-nighters were almost twice as likely to be physically inactive and 2.9 times more likely to sit in front of the television and computer or play video games for more than two hours, which exceeds the Canadian Sedentary Behaviour Guidelines for School- Aged Children and Youth of no more than two hours of screen time per day.

Therefore, it appears that children should be aiming for 10 to 11 hours of sleep daily, preferably between the hours of 10 p.m. and 8 a.m., to lower their risk of obesity and excessive screen time.

How much sleep do you really need?

Sources: Active Healthy Kids Canada and the National Sleep Foundation

Back to "Are today's youth active enough?"

	About Wave Wave is published six times a year by the Winnipeg Health Region in cooperation with the Winnipeg Free Press. It is available at newsstands, hospitals and clinics throughout Winnipeg, as well as McNally Robinson Books. Read the September / October 2012 issue of Wave