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| Date Archive : 4/8/2008 |
| Date Enter; : 4/8/2008 |
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Hour Enter : 11:23:20 AM |
| Resource : AP |
| Summery : When the wind blows, the cradle will rock. And when babies sleep less, they may gain too much weight. A new Harvard study finds that babies and toddlers who sleep fewer than 12 hours daily are at greater risk for being overweight in preschool, startling evidence that the link between sleep and obesity may affect even very young children.
TV viewing heightened the effect. The children who slept the least and watched the most television had the greatest chance of becoming obese. |
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"The two (behaviors) are acting independently. In combination, they are particularly risky," said the study's lead author, Dr. Elsie Taveras of Harvard Medical School.
The findings, published in April's Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, are based on mothers' reports of their babies' sleep habits and TV viewing, and direct measures of the children's height, weight and skinfold thickness.
Starting when the babies were 6 months old, mothers were asked how long their children napped during the day and how long they slept at night. Moms were asked again when the children were 1 and 2 years old. They were asked about TV time when the children reached age 2.
The researchers combined the sleep answers to find an average pattern for each child during the first two years of life. They found 586 of the children slept an average of 12 or more hours a day and 329 of the children slept less than that.
Read more at: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080408/ap_on_he_me/infant_sleep_obesity;_ylt=AoOkOkdIia8kK9Io0O5aGt5Z24cA
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