Teenagers who start the school day really early are likely to weigh slightly more than those who start later. That's the finding of a new study of nearly 30,000 (Canada) between the ages of 10 and 18.
Getting too little sleep can put kids risk for a number of problems. Sleepy teens are more likely to be overweight, to have trouble (concentrate)and to struggle in school. Genevieve Gariepy, who works at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, wanted to know earlier school start times might be connected with weight. So she decided to home in on the impact of school start times.
Her team collected start times for 362 Canadian schools. Then they asked students at those schools (give) their height and weight. In all, they collected data from nearly 30,000 10-to 18-year-olds. Among 6th-to 10th-graders, those who started school earlier were likely to be slightly (heavy) for their height. Every 10-minute delay in school start time (connect), on average, with a slightly lower weight among students who were same sex, age and height. , the difference is slight. Healthy eating and getting enough exercise will play a bigger role in keeping a healthy weight.
Because the study compared kids who already started school at different times of day, it's not clear that changing school start time would help heavier kids lose weight. To know for sure, researchers would want to compare the same kids before after changing to a later school start time.
