Overweight adolescents with poor sleep ‘more likely to suffer ill health’

Obese adolescents may be at greater risk of cardiometabolic disease when they do not get enough sleep.

This is according to a new study published in the Journal of Pediatrics, which studied 37 overweight subjects aged 11 to 17 to see which risk factors affected their likelihood of suffering from type 2 diabetes or cardiovascular disease.

Only five of the participants met the minimal recommended eight-and-a-half hours of sleep per night, with low levels of sleep being shown to be a significant predictor of cardiometabolic risk in obese teens, even after controlling for other influencing factors.

As such, the results could indicate that objective sleep assessment may be a useful screening tool to identify at-risk adolescents.

Lead author Dr Heidi IglayReger, supervisor of the physical activity laboratory at the Michigan Metabolomics and Obesity Center, said the study results "suggest a potential influence of sleep duration on cardiometabolic health in obese adolescents".

Obesity is a growing health problem in the UK. If current trends persist, it is estimated that  60 percent of adult men, 50 percent of adult women and 25 percent of children could be affected by 2050.