Every hour of the day children are inactive adds three minutes to the time it takes them to fall asleep, new research has found.
In the study researchers examined the daytime activity and sleep patterns of a representative sample of 591 seven year olds, using an activity monitor (actigraph) worn for 24 hours.
Full information on sleep patterns was available for 519 of the children, who took an average of 26 minutes to fall asleep, known as sleep latency, but ranging from 13 to 42 minutes.
Around one in 10 of the children regularly found it difficult to fall asleep quickly, their parents reported, and these children took around 15.5 minutes longer to get to sleep.
Children who were physically active during the day, fell asleep more quickly than their more sedentary peers, and the more vigorous activity they did, the faster they fell asleep.
On the other hand, every hour of the day spent in sedentary activity increased sleep latency by three minutes. Shorter sleep latency was also linked to longer duration of sleep. It fell by more than 11 minutes for each additional hour of sleep.
These results will confirm what many parents already believe – that tiring out a child with plenty of physical activity will increase the chances that s/he will sleep well, the researchers wrote. “This study emphasises the importance of physical activity for children, not only for fitness, cardiovascular health and weight control, but also for sleep,” they concluded.
Online First edition of Archives of Disease in Childhood, available at: http://press.psprings.co.uk/adc/june/ac157453.pdf
About Greg Baxter
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