After 1 night of sleep restriction, adolescents with higher levels of adiposity showed lower scores on performance-based measures of overall cognition, flexible thinking, and processing speed. In contrast, adolescents with lower body fat did not experience a decline in performance following the same sleep restriction.
Improved sleep hygiene and duration in this group may positively impact their cognitive health. adolescents classified as overweight or obese had significantly poorer cognitive outcomes following restricted sleep. Global cognition scores in that group dropped from a mean of 103.2 with adequate sleep to 98.0 with restricted sleep. Adolescents who were overweight or obese also had poorer attention scores (mean [SD], 80.0 [2.3]) compared to adolescents with healthy weight (mean [SD], 88.4 [SD, 2.3]) following restricted sleep. However, adolescents with a healthy weight did not show any differences in these areas when their sleep was restricted Thus, the TBF% analyses highlight increased risk of sleep-related cognitive impairment only for adolescents with obesity or severe obesity compared to all adolescents with overweight or obesity,” researchers said in the study. “This highlights a reason for caution in using BMI groupings in research, as those with overweight may be incorrectly identified as having greater risk for negative health outcomes when their risk is more similar to that of adolescents with healthy weight adolescents with overweight or obesity, promote improved health outcomes, and investigate the role of other behavioral and biological (i.e., dim light melatonin onset) factors within these relationships,” researchers concluded.
Adolescents With Higher Adiposity More Vulnerable To Cognitive Impairments From Poor Sleep
