A recent study found that irregular sleep timing is associated with inactivity and increased carbohydrate consumption in adolescents.
The study was conducted by researchers from the College of Medicine at Pennsylvania State University in the United States of America, and a summary of the research was published last April 20 in the journal SLEEP, and its results were presented at the Annual Sleep Meeting 2024, which was held on June 5 in Houston, USA. The United States of America, and the EurekAlert website wrote about it.
The results showed that a later sleep schedule in adolescents was significantly associated with increased carbohydrate intake. This relationship was partly explained by irregular sleep timing, and a later sleep schedule was also associated with increased inactivity.
Delaying sleep schedules is normal during puberty and adolescence. Lead researcher Julio Fernandez Mendoza, a professor and psychiatrist at Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey, USA, said that some teens delay their sleep schedule to such an extent that it becomes inconsistent with the day-night cycle, their social schedules, and their responsibilities. .
“Our data support that this lack of compliance may be linked to inadequate diet and physical activity, further contributing to the epidemic of obesity and poor cardiovascular health.”
According to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, sleep is essential to health, and healthy sleep requires sufficient duration, good quality, appropriate timing and regularity, and the absence of sleep disturbances. A delayed sleep schedule – which is characterized by later sleep timing than the traditional or socially acceptable time – is more common among adolescents and young adults.
The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends that teens get 8 to 10 hours of sleep a night to be healthy.
Mendoza pointed out that daily regularity with the biological clock is essential for the health of adolescents, and said, “Treating the daily imbalance in the sleep-wake cycle and the associated fluctuation in sleep duration should be an integral part of interventions aimed at resolving the problem of poor food choices and the tendency to inactivity among young people.”
According to the Sleep Foundation website in the United States, the biological clock is the natural patterns that occur in the body over the course of each 24-hour cycle. If a person does not sleep when his body tells him that it is time, or if he sleeps for long periods during the day, the clock’s rhythms may become His biology is incompatible with the 24-hour cycle of day and night.