研究发现 睡眠不足的少年更易患心脏疾病
Most kids don't get enough sleep, and that may put them on a path to future heart trouble, a new study finds. Young teens who slept less than seven hours a night tended to have more body fat, elevated blood pressure and less healthy cholesterol levels -- all bad for the heart, researchers say. Heart disease remains a leading killer, said lead researcher Elizabeth Cespedes Feliciano. She's a staff scientist with the Kaiser Permanente Northern California Division of Research in Oakland, Calif. "We really want our youth to be on a healthy trajectory," Feliciano said, "and it's a little alarming you would see adverse cardiometabolic profiles emerging even at an age as young as 13." But it seems that very few kids are getting the kind of nightly slumber that would protect their future heart health. Average sleep duration for kids in the study was only a little over seven hours per day, researchers found. In fact, only 2.2 percent of the kids met or exceeded the average recommended sleep duration for their age group -- nine hours per day for kids 11 to 13 and eight hours per day for teens 14 to 17. "I was really struck by how little these adolescents are sleeping," said Dr. Andrew Varga, a sleep medicine specialist with the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. "It's not totally surprising, given what I know about kids and their habits, but you would think there would be some drive for these kids to sleep more because they have a high sleep need." |