Teens who need to lose weight might start by getting more sleep. A new study has found that adolescents 16 to 19 years old who get less than eight hours sleep most week nights consume more calories. Worse, those calories are more likely to come from high-fat foods, especially snack foods. This effect was especially strong among girls.
The good news is that getting just a bit more sleep can really cut down on the urge to snack. Only about a third of the young people in the study actually got at least eight hours of sleep on average, so there’s a lot of room for improvement. Sleep experts believe that teenagers need about nine hours of sleep nightly for optimum health.
[Sleep, online, Sept. 1, 2010]
The People's Perspective on Medicine