Time spent watching television impacts on body mass index in youth with obesity, but only in those with shortest sleep duration

Abstract

Aim:To determine the interplay between sleep and sedentary behaviours on body mass index (BMI) in children with obesity. Methods: Cross-sectional study of 343 children with obesity aged 4-17 years, from a tertiary care weight management clinic in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Multifaceted data relating to activity and sleep from child and parent questionnaires analysed with anthropometric data collected during routine clinical care. Associations between sleep duration and activity measures were examined via regression models with adjustment for potential confounders. Results: Higher BMI was associated with more hours spent watching television (P = 0.04), as well as less reported enjoyment of physical activity (P = 0.005) and less time spent in organised sport activity (P = 0.005). Higher BMI was also associated with higher levels of obstructive sleep apnoea (P = 0.002). Less time in bed was associated with higher levels of BMI (P = 0.03) but analysis by sex revealed this association to only hold for males. In the whole group, a significant television and sleep interaction was seen, such that increasing television watching was associated with higher BMI, but only in those with shortest sleep duration. Conclusions: Both poor sleep and increasing screen time (including television viewing, smart-phone use, internet use or video-gaming) appear to impact BMI in children with obesity, with a particular detrimental effect of television viewing in those who sleep less. Efforts to improve sleep time and quality in children may minimise negative effects of screen time on increasing BMI and should be included in public health strategies to combat obesity in childhood.

What Media Helps, What Media Hurts: A Mixed Methods Survey Study of Coping with COVID-19 Using the Media Repertoire Framework and the Appraisal Theory of Stress

“…This contradiction is not surprising. Although concerns about mental health stressfulness of media are debatable, either due to cultural differences [ 25 ], wide misconceptions about the definition of stress [ 18 ], or individual reasons for use [ 6 , 14 - 16 , 36 ], deleterious physical health effects of excessive screen time are quantifiable [ 4 , 5 , 41 , 42 ]. One out of four respondents were very worried about the physical health risks of increased screen time, but only 1 out of 7 were concerned about the mental health risks.…”

“…There is a growing concern about the potential adverse effects of excessive screen time on emotional and physical health. To name a few harms, there is stress caused by an abundance of catastrophic news [ 2 ]; increased sedentary behavior and obesity [ 3 , 4 ]; sleep disorders [ 5 ]; and addiction to social media [ 6 ], computer games [ 7 ], online gambling [ 8 ], etc. Nevertheless, the debate about the directional relationship between stress and compulsive screen use is nuanced.…”

Epidemiology, Predisposing Factors, Biomarkers, and Prevention Mechanism of Obesity: A Systematic Review

“…Many literature studies extensively identified that either irregular physical exercise or physical inactiveness [7,10,14,15,26,30], watching television or prolonged screen time [27,30], short sleep duration or shift work [15,24,30], stress, obesogenic environment (urbanization and industrialization) [31], smoking [10], and frequent use of a taxi for transportation [10,32] were determinant factors for overweight/obesity.…”

“…Watching electronic screens for more than 2 hours increases the development of obesity because during simple observation, the brain does not utilize glucose and as a result, the metabolism of carbohydrate to glycogen and fat increased consistently [27,30]. e correlation between stress and the development of obesity has different scientific perspectives.…”

What Media Helps, What Media Hurts: A Mixed Methods Survey Study of Coping with COVID-19 Using the Media Repertoire Framework and the Appraisal Theory of Stress (Preprint)

“…This contradiction is not surprising. Although concerns about mental health stressfulness of media are debatable, either due to cultural differences [25], wide misconceptions about the definition of stress [18], or individual reasons for use [6,[14][15][16]36], deleterious physical health effects of excessive screen time are quantifiable [4,5,41,42]. One out of four respondents were very worried about the physical health risks of increased screen time, but only 1 out of 7 were concerned about the mental health risks.…”