New US research has found that going to bed late at night and not keeping a regular sleep schedule appears to be associated with a greater risk of obesity in teenage girls.

Led by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital for Children (MGHfC) and Harvard Medical School, the new study looked at 418 girls and 386 boys aged 12 to 17 and asked them to wear a wrist actigraph — which records periods of rest and activity — for five days or more.  

The researchers used the data to examine each participant’s chronotype, which is their preference for staying up late in the evening versus getting up early in the morning, and “social jet lag,” which is the difference in sleep timing between school and free days.

The participants were also asked to complete questionnaires, and researchers recorded their anthropometric measurements, which are measurements of the muscle, bone, and adipose tissue used to assess the composition of the body.

The findings, published in JAMA Pediatrics, showed that an evening chronotype and greater social jet lag were associated with a greater likelihood of being overweight in girls, but not in boys.

For the girls, staying up later was associated with an average .58 cm increase in waist size and a .16 kg/m2 increase in body fat, and each hour of social jet lag was associated with a 1.19 cm larger waist size and a 0.45 kg/m2 increase in body fat.

The findings also held true even after taking into account sleep duration and other lifestyle behaviors.

“Beyond quantity and quality, timing is a vital component of sleep because it determines if an individual’s circadian clock — the internal sleep/wake schedule — is synchronized with the rhythms of their daily activities,” said Elsie Taveras, MD, MPH, senior investigator. “This is particularly important to adolescents whose evening preferences and academic demands often result in irregular sleep schedules that may cause circadian misalignment.”

The researchers say the findings emphasize the need for teens to keep a consistent sleep-wake patterns throughout the week, including on weekends.

“Large variability in sleep patterns across the week can disrupt normal physiology, resulting in obesity and cardiometabolic risk,” explained lead author Elizabeth Cespedes Feliciano, ScD, ScM. “Our study supports the importance of biological clocks in influencing obesity risk.”

“Families should encourage consistency in their children’s sleep schedules and their bed and wake times as well as improvements in their sleep hygiene by limiting electronic media and caffeine use in the evening,” said Feliciano.

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The most experimental phase of life where one grows every second be it physically, emotionally, and in every sector is the Teenage. This phase of teenage is a slightly vulnerable age too, where there is a lot to explore and a lot of self-doubts, and physical hindrance occurs as it is this time that the body reacts to hormonal changes.

Here are a few tips that you should follow for your Body during teenage:

Taking care of your health- While teenagers are infamous for their love of junk food, it is imperative that they eat the right diet. Maintaining the proper calorie content is vital for proper growth, both health wise as well as height wise. Eating too many calories can lead to obesity and associated complications while eating too little can leave teens lacking energy and facing other health obstacles. A healthy diet for adolescents should incorporate farm-fresh fruits and greens as a staple diet. For optimal nourishment, youth should strive for at least 2 servings of seasonal food every day. Moreover, diversity is essential for fruits and vegetables. A comprehensive way to learn is to eat a large variety of colours.

Essential vitamins

When it gets to minerals and vitamins, calcium is one of the most critical elements of a healthful diet for teenagers. During the adolescent years, bones stop building and arrive their final grown-up form. Calcium helps firm, solid, strong bones that are protected from fractures and breaks. In addition to getting calcium from dairy, this essential nutrient can also be located in nuts like almonds as well as fresh deep green vegetables like spinach. Usually, 2 to 3 meals every day of these calcium enrich foods should be incorporated in a teenager’s nutrition. Iron is also essential to teens in accession to calcium. The best origins of iron are dried fruit like dates, red meat, and certainly beans. Some excellent options combine citrus fruits, which are packed with Vitamin C are lemons and oranges.

Fat is important

While majority believe fats are dangerous, a healthy diet for teenagers requires some fats as a portion of their nutrition. Nevertheless, not every lipid is formed alike. Teens should shun unhealthy saturated fat and trans-fats. Alternatively, they should go for the wholesome fats obtained in fishes and nuts. These fats support individual brain capacity and improve bones and ligaments making them strong.

Concentrating on proteins

Also when observing a healthy diet for teenagers, it is necessary for teens to get sufficient protein, particularly with boys, who may want to grow more muscles. The competent approach to get protein is for teenagers to try periodically two portions of soy products, eggs, nuts, or high-protein dairy each day and meat. Teenagers also require a few servings of complex carbohydrates each day. Nevertheless, numerous teens truly eat too many carbs. A portion can be as little as 4 slices of bread or half a cup of cooked rice.

Routine exercise is mandatory

Proper stretching exercise helps to increase your height. In fact, the best possible ways to increase your height is through the right kind of exercise. Scientific researchers have confirmed that the body generates more HGH after a body does dynamic exercises such as stretching activities. The greater levels of HGH obliquely helps to increase the discs between the vertebrae of your spinal shaft and the cartilage at the tips of your long bones like that of the thigh. Besides inciting the body to generate more HGH, stretching activities helps to increase height by rectifying the arrangement of your spinal shaft and stretching it to its optimal range. This too transpires in a few added lengths to make you taller.

Here are some Health Tips, that will provide you with the best guidance. To find health tips now you do not have to go anywhere else. There are numerous articles which give a scientific insight on how to be healthy and incorporate diets. Findhealthtips is indeed a great platform setup with the vision of providing right in-depth health information in lucid language that can be followed by all.

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