--- title: For boys in particular, skimping on sleep associated with increased risk for overweight and obesity in adolescence description: Findings presented yesterday at a meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies in Vancouver suggest that, for some teens, getting too little sleep may increase the... canonical: https://time.com/archive/7144705/lack-of-sleep-increases-obesity-risk-for-adolescent-boys/ author: TIME Staff article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2010-05-05T17:14:31.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-16T11:41:55.342Z article:section: Health og:title: For boys in particular, skimping on sleep associated with increased risk for overweight and obesity in adolescence og:description: Findings presented yesterday at a meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies in Vancouver suggest that, for some teens, getting too little sleep may increase the... og:url: https://time.com/archive/7144705/lack-of-sleep-increases-obesity-risk-for-adolescent-boys/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: For boys in particular, skimping on sleep associated with increased risk for overweight and obesity in adolescence twitter:description: Findings presented yesterday at a meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies in Vancouver suggest that, for some teens, getting too little sleep may increase the... twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- * [Health](/section/health/) # Lack of sleep linked to obesity risk for adolescent boys > Sponsored content. 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Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) May 5, 2010 5:14 PM UTC by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) May 5, 2010 5:14 PM UTC  A teenage boy sleeping Getty Images/Image Source—(c) Image Source Findings presented yesterday at a meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies in Vancouver suggest that, for some teens, getting too little sleep may increase the risk for obesity. What’s more, the [research](http://www.abstracts2view.com/pas/view.php?nu=PAS10L1%5F588&terms) implies that this correlation is more prevalent in boys than girls: compared to peers who got more rest, teen boys who got too little sleep were particularly susceptible to an increased risk for overweight and obesity, while there was little association between too little sleep and higher body mass index (BMI) among girls. As study author Leslie Lytle, from the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at [Seattle Children’s Hospital Research Institute](http://www.seattlechildrens.org/research/), told NPR: --- > “” --- more The study included 723 adolescents and analyzed sleep habits, BMI, depression risk, socioeconomic background, average daily activity and other factors. The researchers found that, adolescents — boys in particular — who got fewer than the recommended 8.5 to 9 hours of sleep each night tended to be at higher risk for overweight, high BMI and obesity compared with those who got sufficient sleep. This correlation was evident even when adolescents only skimped on sleep by an hour or half hour,[ NPR points out](http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2010/05/some%5Fteens%5Fwho%5Fsleep%5Fless%5Fgain.html). Additionally, the researchers found that, while the link between poor sleep and obesity risk was evident in early adolescence, it was less so during high school, but returned again later in life. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7144705/lack-of-sleep-increases-obesity-risk-for-adolescent-boys/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7144705/lack-of-sleep-increases-obesity-risk-for-adolescent-boys/"},"headline":"Lack of sleep linked to obesity risk for adolescent boys","datePublished":"2010-05-05T17:14:31.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-16T11:41:55.342Z","description":"Findings presented yesterday at a meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies in Vancouver suggest that, for some teens, getting too little sleep may increase the...","url":"https://time.com/archive/7144705/lack-of-sleep-increases-obesity-risk-for-adolescent-boys/","keywords":["overweight","adolescence"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"TIME Staff","url":"https://time.com/author/time-staff/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/archive/7144705/lack-of-sleep-increases-obesity-risk-for-adolescent-boys/","name":"Lack of sleep linked to obesity risk for adolescent boys"}}]}] ```