Preschool children who go to bed by 8pm every night have half the risk of becoming obese as a teenager, US research has found.
Led by researchers at Ohio State University in the US, the study, published in the Journal of Pediatrics, studied data from nearly 1000 children, with the bedtimes divided into three categories: 8pm or earlier, between 8pm and 9pm, and after 9pm.
Researchers then examined the children’s height, weight and body mass index as teenagers, and found that only one in 10 of the children with the earlier bedtimes were obese teens, compared to 16 per cent of children with mid-range bedtimes.
More than 20 per cent of the children who went to bed after 9pm were found to be obese.
“Pre-school aged children with early weekday bedtimes were half as likely as those with late bedtimes to become obese as adolescents,” the researchers wrote.
While it’s unclear how exactly children’s bedtimes affect body weight, other studies have found that a lack of sleep is linked to hormones that regulate appetite and metabolism.
