Do Teens Who Sleep In Stay Slimmer?

The more sleep teens get, the less likely they are to be overweight, a new study finds. Researchers followed more than 1,000 Philadelphia-area teenagers from their freshman through senior years of high school. Every six months, the teens reported their sleep patterns. The results showed that each additional hour of sleep per night was associated with reduced body-mass index (BMI), a measure of body fat based on height and weight. The reduction was greatest in those with higher BMIs, meaning they were more overweight. Based on their findings, the researchers from the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine suggested that increasing sleep from eight to 10 hours a night at age 18 could lead to a 4 percent reduction in the number of overweight or obese American teens. That would translate to about 500,000 fewer overweight teens. The study was published online April 8 in the journal Pediatrics. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_135873.html