A new research said sleep loss kids can eat more read more at here www.spinonews.com/index.php/item/1259-a-new-research-said-sleep-loss-kids-can-eat-more

A new study suggests, young kids who miss a daytime nap and also stay up late at night are likely to consume more calories.

These findings may shed light on how to sleep loss can increase weight gain and why a number of studies show that preschoolers who do not get enough sleep are more likely to be obese as a child and later in life.

Elsa Mullins, the study first author, from University of Colorado at Boulder, said, to our knowledge, this is the first issue to experimentally measure the effects of sleep loss on food consumption in preschool children.

She said, our results are consistent with those from other studies of adults and adolescents, showing increased caloric intake on days that subjects slept deprived.

Preschoolers were deprived of roughly three hours of sleep on one day they had no afternoon nap and were kept up for about two hours past their normal bedtime before being awakened at their regularly scheduled times the next morning.

Assistant Professor Monique LeBourgeois, lead study author, said, during the day of lost sleep, the 3 and 4-year old’s consumed about 20 percent more calories than usual, 25 percent more sugar and 26 percent more carbohydrates.

The following day, the kids were allowed to sleep as much as they needed. On this "recovery day," they returned to normal baseline levels of sugar and carbohydrate consumption, but still consumed 14 percent more calories and 23 percent more fat than normal.

LeBourgeois said, we found that sleep loss, increased the dietary intake of preschoolers on both the day of and the day after restricted sleep.