Daily HealthBeat Tip - January 10, 2007

Sleeping easier

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I’m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

Keep the kids active during the day, and they’ll sleep easier at night. And not just because they got tired – a researcher says kids who exercise more actually breathe easier as they sleep.

Catherine Davis of the Medical College of Georgia saw what happened when overweight seven- to 11-year-olds took part in about three months of daily aerobic exercise. Her study in the journal Obesity was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Davis looked at breathing problems that can affect sleep, notably snoring. She found exercise seemed to pay off:

"Of the kids in the study who started out screening positive for sleep-disordered breathing – that seemed to have a problem – a quarter of the kids in the study – half of them improved to not showing that they had a problem at the end." (11 seconds)

Learn more at www.hhs.gov.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I'm Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: January, 10 2007