body mass index
Poor Sleep Habits in Adolescence Correlated with Cardiovascular Risk
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
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Just ask any parent or teacher, most of today’s teens and pre-teens don’t seem to get enough sleep. And what sleep they do get is often poor quality—no great surprise, given that smartphones and other electronic devices are usually never far from their reach. Now, an NIH-funded team has uncovered the strongest evidence yet that this lack of quality sleep may be setting our kids up for some serious health issues later in life.
The team’s study of more than 800 adolescents, ages 11 through 13, confirmed that many are getting an insufficient amount of undisturbed, restful sleep each night. While earlier studies had found a link between sleep duration and obesity [1], the new work shows that a wide range of other cardiovascular risk factors are affected by both too little sleep and poor sleep quality [2]. When compared to well-rested kids, sleep-deprived youth were found to have higher blood pressure, bigger waistlines, and lower levels of high density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, which is associated with lower risk of cardiovascular disease.
Genetic Studies Yield New Insights into Obesity
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
Today, we hear a great deal about which foods to eat and which to avoid to maintain a healthy body. Though we know that one of the strongest contributors to body weight is heredity, there has been less specific information available about the genetics underlying obesity. But research in this area is progressing at a phenomenal pace, and new genomic discoveries are helping to bring into better focus how our bodies store fat and how the complex interplay of genetics, diet, behavior, and other factors determine whether we can readily maintain a healthy body weight, or whether it takes a lot of work to do so.
Two papers in Nature provide lots of fresh clues into the genetic factors involved in predisposing to obesity. Researchers in the international Genetic Investigation of ANthropometric Traits (GIANT) Consortium, more than 500 strong and including some of the members of my own NIH research lab (including me), examined the genomes of more than half a million people to look for genes and regions of chromosomes that play a role in body fat distribution and obesity. They turned up over 140 genetic locations that, like low-intensity voices in a choir of many, contribute to these traits. Further analyses of the specific genes located in these regions suggest the possibility that the programming behind how fat cells form may influence their distribution, a discovery that could lead to exploitable findings down the road.
