I do not say anything new if I affirm that obesity is one of the biggest problems of children and adolescents today and that we run the risk of reaching more than worrying figures if things do not change. In the attempt to precisely turn the trend around, there are several studies that try to glimpse the variables and conditions that make children become overweight.
One of them, quite curious, states that children who wake up have a hole in their parents' bed have a lower risk of obesity than those children who are sent back to their beds.
How did they do the study
The study was intended to assess how, in addition to exercise and diet, sleep can affect children's weight. According to the authors' hypothesis, improving the diet, exercising, reducing stress and improving the quantity and quality of sleep should serve to reduce the risk of obesity.
To carry out the study, a sample of 5,902 Danish children between 2 and 6 years of age was taken at risk of being overweight because of their high birth weight, because it was their mothers who were overweight while pregnant or because the mothers were poor.
The children were divided into three groups, one on which the intervention was made, another control on which only records were taken and a third on which they also intervened, but noting the results only at the beginning and at the end of the study. The intervention lasted a year and a half and consisted of guiding families by improving diet and physical activity, reducing stress and trying to improve children's sleep.
One of the conclusions they reached is that the children who could sleep in the parents' bed upon waking had three times less likely to be obese that those children who once arrived in the parents' room were "sent" back to their beds.
Nanna Olsen, one of the researchers, said:
Negative psychosocial responses, such as feelings of rejection when they are not allowed to get into their parents' bed, could lead to being overweight.
The question is, is there causation?
Although there is a relationship between a lower body mass index in children and sleeping with parents, the researchers state that causality is not proven and that one thing might not be a consequence of the other, so it is necessary to continue investigating in this line.
Personally I dare not say that sleeping with children has an impact on weight. I would rather say that having respectful, affectionate, empathic and attentive parents helps children have less episodes of stress, suffer less anxiety and, consequently, use food less as an escape valve for tension and accumulated nerves. That conclusion seems more logical to me, although of course, respecting and trying to understand the children implies implicitly letting them get into bed if they wake up at night and do not want to be alone.
