The Association of Sleep Habits and Obesity in Children

Abnormal sleep habits are associated with childhood obesity in some studies, but most focus on sleep duration only and suffer from a lack of objectively measured sleep data.

In the current longitudinal study, researchers examined repeated objective sleep measures and their association with obesity in Swedish children between ages 2 and 6 years. Participants were also grouped by their obesity risk (high, n=64; low, n=43) based on parental overweight and obesity status.

Once annually, children's sleep patterns were assessed with a wrist-worn actigraphy device, and anthropometric measurements were taken to calculate body-mass index (BMI) and waist circumference. Sleep measures included sleep onset (clock time), latency (time taken to fall asleep…