http://www.reuters.com/article/heal...430080720080804

Gee, now if they can just figure out which is the cart and which is the horse. Either that or they can start lecturing kids on getting enough REM sleep.

If we shame them enough about it, I'm sure they'll get the message.

I'm sure the drug companies are now working on an REM drug to cure obesity!

Their apparent conclusion that "sleep deprivation" is causing weight gain makes no sense. How are these fat children being sleep deprived? They don't mention any factors observed in the study that were causing fatter children to, say, have to go to bed later later than they want, get woke up at night more often or anything. All they observed was that they slept less time. If the kids sleep less because that's just how long they happen to sleep, they aren't being deprived of sleep and some other factor must be causing them to get or maybe need less sleep.

This reasoning is flawed. People with sleep apnea happen to sleep less and it does mean they are sleep deprived.

The questions to me are whether one is driving the other and whether the reduction in sleep has a deleterious effect. Other research on sleep has indicated that getting too little sleep leads to insulin resistance in a remarkably short period of time but I wouldn't call the effect proven. Still other research indicates sleeping to long is *associated* with various medical problems, though I haven't read where anyone has discussed if there is a causal relationship.

What I was wondering about is that they didn't mention any specific circumstance that was clearly depriving the kids of sleep when they might otherwise choose to be sleeping more, so I'm wondering what it is that is actually causing them to sleep less. Are the kids waking up tired because they couldn't sleep comfortably due to a health condition fat kids might have more of? Do thinner kids' brains require more sleep? I have also heard not sleeping enough causes insulin resistance, but they didn't mention the kids were actually being shortchanged of sleep like if I choose to stay up too late busy doing something and miss out on sleep. Something is happening inside these kids' bodies that is probably a lot more complex than can be solved by just telling them to get more shut-eye. It could even be sleep apnea or something similar. I think the doctors need to figure out what is really going wrong with these kids health-wise regarding sleep patterns rather than just saying make your kid sleep more so he won't get fat.

Good find. Nothing more perplexing than defensive forum responses of people told that, in order to be healthier, they need more sleep.



What makes you think this? What part of Less Sleep = Sleep Deprived don't you understand? Do you think that choosing to stay up and being forced to stay up makes any difference to the body?

There is a growing difference in the number of hours people sleep and the number of hours required by the body to go through a fairly complex cycle of endocrine changes while sleeping. This required cycle of hormones and neurotransmitters has taken the same amount of time since forever, but people are getting less sleep. The variation in the time required for this cycle to complete from person to person is measured in minutes, not hours. Getting less sleep than the body requires to do this work is bad, and apparently makes us eat food more and store fat more. In mice, too, and the fastest way to give a lab rat cancer is too keep it awake.

Tell us that we can't eat sugar, but PLEASE don't tell us that we can't stay up all night.

I think we must be defining "deprivation" differently. What I mean is that, say, you're someone who only needs seven hours of sleep and you get seven, while the next person really physiologically needs nine but gets seven. They're sleep deprived, you aren't. Are the kids actually getting less sleep than they need and thus compromising their health or do they actually physiologically need less sleep than the other kids? If it's the latter, I'm thinking making them sleep more isn't going to help them lose weight because something else must be the cause.

I think people didn't choose to stay up late at night before electricity because it was dark. So they probably got a heck of a lot more sleep than we do. I've tried reading by lamplight, it isn't easy.

There is currently no one who only needs seven hours of sleep to complete the hormonal sleep cycle. It is this cycle's failure to complete that is implicated in appetite dysfunction and insulin resistance. Additionally, the slower reaction times of someone who gets only seven hours of sleep is measurable.