TV in child's bedroom may be linked to weight gain

Television in bedroom raises child's risk for obesity U.S. researchers suggest removing televisions from the bedrooms of children may be helpful in the nation's fight against child obesity. Diane Gilbert-Diamond of the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth in Lebanon, N.H., and colleagues said more than a third of U.S. children and adolescents are overweight or obese and an estimated 71 percent of children and adolescents ages 8 to 18 have bedroom TVs.
The authors conducted a telephone survey in 2003 of 6,522 boys and girls ages 10 to 14 asking questions about bedroom televisions. Body mass index was based on self-reporting and parent-reported weight and height after baseline numbers were given by children or parents.
At baseline, 59.1 percent of the children surveyed reported having a bedroom television. More boys, ethnic minorities and children of lower socioeconomic status reported bedroom televisions, Gilbert-Diamond said.
The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics, found having a bedroom television was associated with an excess BMI of 0.57 at age 2 and 0.75 at age 4 of follow-up, and a BMI gain of 0.24 from ages 2 to 4.
The study authors did not investigate causal reasons, but they speculated the association could possibly be due to disrupted sleep patterns or greater exposure to child-targeted food advertising.
Source: UPI