Science confirms what our grandmothers already said: children grow while they sleep. Specifically, this child growth is linked to an increase in the total daily hours of sleep, as concluded by Michelle Lampl, from Emory University (USA), in the first study of the biological mechanism of "stretching" , published in the journal Sleep in its latest edition. The article reveals that the irregularities in the sleep of babies , which are so often disturbing to parents, could play an important role in growth and development .
Specifically, Lampl and his colleagues have found that longer periods of sleep in both boys and girls are related to an increase in weight and in the amount of body fat -especially accumulated in the abdomen-, and linked in turn to a subsequent increase in height. In the case of girls, the spurts are usually associated with sleeping longer in each sleep interval, while boys tend to sleep more times for less time.
On average, the authors conclude, growth-associated baby sleep patterns account for 4.5 more hours of sleep a day for two days , and about three more daily "naps" than usual.
