Free Learner

Doctors wrong about weight loss by a factor of 3

From the Independent (UK), in an article titled Scientists debunk decades-old theories on losing weight (emphasis my own):

If you cut out a chocolate bar each day you will lose only one-third of the weight that experts had thought. For decades, doctors have based their advice to those who want to lose weight on the assumption that cutting 500 calories a day will see the weight fall off at the rate of 1lb a week.

"This is wrong," Kevin Hill, of the National Institutes of Health in the United States, said. "It does not happen." The error has arisen because the calculation did not take account of changes in metabolism as weight falls. The body adjusts to reductions in energy intake (calories eaten) by slowing its energy output (calories expended). The result is that forgoing that daily chocolate bar containing 250 calories will lead to about 25lb of weight loss if it is sustained for three years, much less than the 78lb predicted by the old dieting assumption.

I don't go on restrictive diets, but on behalf of those who do, may I say: "Whoops!" doesn't bloody well cover it.  Maybe they should've based their claims about weight loss on some kind of... oh, I don't know, empirical evidence?

Mainstream medicine has apparently been running with an untested theory.  In theory eating 500 fewer calories per day should equal 1 pound of weight loss weekly.  Here's how the Mayo Clinic puts it:

Because 3,500 calories equals about 1 pound (0.45 kilogram) of fat, you need to burn 3,500 calories more than you take in to lose 1 pound. So if you cut 500 calories from your typical diet each day, you'd lose about 1 pound a week (500 calories x 7 days = 3,500 calories).

It sounds simple, right?  And that's the whole problem.  Nothing in the human body is simple.

Researchers and doctors must have seen, over the years, that things didn't seem to be working out that way.  But apparently, when the data put their hypothesis in doubt, they throw out the data.  That is, if people aren't losing weight at the expected rate, then they must be lying about what they're eating, i.e. the data are flawed.  Doctors didn't see that the equation wasn't true in actual human experience; they just saw fat liars.  People do lie (prolifically!) about what they eat and drink, but someone surely should've gotten to the bottom of this much earlier, and realized the mistake.  In the meantime, many thousands of overweight people who were diligently cutting calories have been disdained as fibbers by their doctors, on the basis of their less-than-predicted weight loss.

Medical folks should've known better for two reasons.  First, the human body is extraordinarily complex, and "calories in, calories out" was always an absurdly, ridiculously simplistic idea (e.g. see this post and this one).  Secondly, didn't they consider the hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution, during which starvation was a common danger?  And surmise, therefore, that our bodies just might have ways of protecting energy reserves in the face of a declining food supply?  Their simple equation, in which 500 calories x 7 = 1 pound fat, assumed that our bodies would not react to a sudden loss of 500 calories / day, but would simply burn through energy reserves to compensate.  That didn't account -- obviously -- for the possibility that our bodies might find a way to conserve energy.  There is very little respect for nature in modern medicine, else they might have realized what an asisine assumption that was.

 

Mass psychosis

This is a horrifying but interesting article on the use of anti-psychotic medications in the US.  It begins:

Has America become a nation of psychotics?

Apparently, in 2008, anti-psychotics surpassed every other category of drug -- even cholesterol-lowering statin drugs -- to become the number one most prescribed type of medication in the US.

Some other shocking statistics from the article:

• In a recent study, 1 in 5 children who saw a psychiatrist came away with a prescription for an anti-psychotic drug.
• Because bipolar disorder can be treated with the newer (still patented) anti-psychotics, diagnoses of bipolar disorder in children rose by 40 times between 1994 and 2003.
• 18 of the 20 psychiatrists who wrote the current clinical treatment guidelines for depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia had ties to drug companies.
• The number of Americans now classified as disabled by mental illness, enough to qualify for Social Security benefits, has more than doubled between 1987 and 2007, from 1 in 184 to 1 in 76.  This casts doubt on the efficacy of all new (expensive, patented) psychiatric drugs in general.

Anti-psychotics are inadequately studied in children, and may cause obesity and diabetes.  As with many psychiatric drugs there is also a risk that in a small minority of people they may cause violence and/or suicide.

Yep, there's a mass psychosis going on here, but it's not the sort the shrinks are seeing in their patients.

Juice recipes

I have to confess that I really hate saying that I'm "juicing".  It seems like such a yuppie / granola thing to be doing, and I didn't grow up in that kind of community.  That said, my advice is "don't knock it till you try it."

For one thing, I seem to have solved my lack of appetite issue.  Drink about 16oz of fruit and veggie juice and less than an hour later, I'm starving for eggs, chicken, bread, and rice.  (I doubt this is typical though, or I don't see how anyone could possibly do a 10-day juice fast.)  I'm all for Weston A Price and steak and eggs for breakfast, but personally I seem better off starting with juice, and moving on to the heavier foods later.

Secondly, while I write this I'm sipping some juice that is actually really good.  I made it from two green apples, three carrots (peeled), a pickling cucumber, a small lemon (peeled), and a hunk of watermelon (without the hardest part of the rind).  It's pretty tart, but it's very tasty.

Third, it's making me want more fresh food.  I've made salsa twice in as many days, which is a good way to get raw garlic and onion (and in my case, oodles of cilantro, also a particularly healthy plant).

The mean green stuff (featured in the documentary I've mentioned) is okay, but my advice is to start with only 4 kale leaves the first time you make it, and to be generous with the ginger and double the lemon or use a couple of small limes in place of the lemon.  [UPDATE: I think that kale was already getting old, some of the leaves were starting to yellow.  I used fresh, very dark green kale in another juice and it did not have the same bitterness.]  I also liked it better when I added a pinch of salt.  It didn't make it taste salty, but apparently salt is a flavor enhancer even when you're not aware of it (thus its presence in some fruit salad recipes).  I've made it twice so far (second time was a double batch) and I'll keep tweaking it.  Kale seems to be in most juicing recipes, I think not only because of the high mineral content but because of the protein.  But if you're not fasting, you can get the protein elsewhere and you could use spinach or other less bitter greens instead.

There are more recipes here, here, and here.

And yes, I actually do feel more energetic after drinking some raw juice.  If it's the placebo effect, well... hurrah for the placebo effect!

Surprising sources of protein

So, I was over at the  "Reboot" website that's associated with Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead (see yesterday's post).  I was looking at recipes when I came across one containing kale, watermelon, and blueberries (egad-- sounds terrible).  But what caught my eye was that it had 6 grams of protein in it.

Wait a minute, I thought.  Protein from where?  I mean yes, I knew veggies contained small amounts of protein, but they're really small amounts, right?  And mostly that's in the root vegetables, surely?  Where do you get 6 grams out of protein out of a couple cups of watermelon, a cup of blueberries, and a half dozen kale leaves?

I decided to look up some veggies and fruits at the USDA website.  It turns out that a cup of chopped raw kale has 2.2g protein.  That may not sound like much, but consider that it only has 34 calories.  A large orange has 1.7g protein and 86 calories.  A cup of spinach has less than a gram of protein (0.86g) but it only has 7 calories (!).  A cup of raw carrots is over a gram of protein (1.2g) and 52 calories.

A cup of blueberries, raspberries, or cherries each has over a gram of protein and less than 100 calories, while a cup of blackberries is 2g protein for only 62 calories.  A cup of chopped green pepper has 1.3g protein and only 30 calories.

An adult needs something like 40-60g protein per day (a number which is still in dispute).  If you were eating a variety of fruits and vegetables and aiming for even 1,500 calories per day, I've no doubt you'd get enough protein.  The question is whether it's reasonable to attempt to consume that many calories from raw produce-- sheesh!  Juicing would appear to be the only way you could consume and digest that much plant material, but I'm not at all sure that 6 16-oz juices per day (as recommended in the "Reboot" program) is going to be enough calories.  Ten days of very reduced calorie intake might make your body go into famine mode, causing it to lower your metabolism and reduce energy expenditures.

On the other hand, maybe it's not all about calories, maybe it's about nutrient intake.  If you're getting protein and oodles of micronutrients then maybe your body won't freak out (although I would certainly eat some olives and avocadoes because you can't go without fat). 

One interpretation of obesity is that it's a disease of malnutrition.  People's bodies want them to eat more and more because they're not getting the nutrition they need.  The trouble is that you can eat as much McDonald's as you'd like and you'll never get the nutrients you need.  Perhaps if you're getting flooded with vitamins, enzymes, and phytonutrients your body will be less sensitive to the gross number of calories, and will be more than satisfied on half a dozen large, raw juices.  Surprisingly, the protein content may not be far off from the recommended amounts.

"Fat, sick, and nearly dead"

That's the name of a documentary I somehow happened upon on Netflix instant play.  It starts out a little slow, but the second half features an extraordinary story of a seriously obese truck driver who turns his health (and his life) around completely.

Yes, the documentary is based around a "fad" diet of 100% raw juices, but they don't suggest people do this forever.  They suggest that people do a "re-boot" of several days, or longer if so desired.  Both the guys in the documentary did this with medical supervision for 60+ days, and had no adverse reactions.  All the results were extremely positive.

The food options for most Americans are overwhelmingly unhealthy.  Even the "not from concentrate" OJ my kids like, seemingly a pretty healthy item, is still pasteurized and therefore many of the plant nutrients are destroyed.  Most baked products use white flour, most sugars are ultra-refined white sugars, the beef is from "cows" that eat grain (thus making them almost a different animal), and so on.  The truck driver is an extreme example-- a guy whose job largely prevents exercise or anything remotely resembling healthy eating-- but it's only a moderate exaggeration of what people in midwestern towns are up against.  Nowhere to walk, nowhere to get a really good salad, nowhere to get fresh, organic produce of the kinds humans evolved on (although farmer's markets are changing that)... but lots of greasy spoons where $6 gets you about four meals' worth of hash browns fried in Crisco, eggs, and white toast.

Despite all the above pessimism, which is how I normally feel about American food, the movie is really inspiring.  We do still have choices!  And boy, do they make a difference.

Quick food update

I feel obligated to say how the "eating more food" experiment is going-- even though, as it turns out, I can't really stomach eating more food.

I do feel better when I eat right after waking up, as Matt Stone recommends.  And I do feel better when I eat more frequently, and when I eat more calories in a day.  And, interestingly, when I'm eating more I'm actually hungrier.  The more I eat, the hungrier I am.  Some days, though, I have no desire to eat anything, period.

After two months of trying hard to eat more food, I have not gained any weight nor do any of my pants feel tighter.  I'm beginning to believe that homeostasis -- your body's ability to maintain the status quo -- is a hell of a powerful force.  If you want to eat more, eat less, lose weight, or gain weight, well... good frickin' luck.  [Edit: I mean while eating healthy food.  And by "healthy" I mean "existed 150 years ago".]  I'll keep trying, because as I said, when I eat more I feel better.  And it seems to have no effect on how I look or how much I weigh, in total contradiction to what's "supposed" to happen.

I suppose I need to try exercising in order to generate more of an appetite, but it doesn't necessarily work that way if you're low on T3 thyroid hormone, as I am.  Unless it's very gentle exercise it runs the risk of actually slowing down your metabolism.  When you're hypothyroid, instead of your catecholamines signaling "Woo-hoo!  Exercise!  Let's speed up that metabolism!" they instead signal "Whoa... let's just slow the hell down here, what is this, the chain gang?  Take that metabolism as low as she'll go."  I oversimplify, but that's the gist.  Since millions of people are low in T3 even though their doctors (who don't look at T3) say their thyroid function is normal, there are thus millions of people who exercise in total misery without losing any weight at all (in fact, they might gain weight).  Additionally, exercise releases cortisol, and plenty of Americans, me included, already have sky-high cortisol levels.  High cortisol exacerbates the thyroid issue.

On a somewhat related note, you know how, stereotypically, virtually all women think they need to lose 5 pounds of fat?  Well, here is an actual picture (courtesy the batty.us site), using an anatomical model, of what five pounds of fat would look like.  It's that disgusting yellow stuff next to her thigh:

Okayyy... that's way the hell more volume than I would've thought.  And it's pretty clear that a lot of normal-sized women obsessed with losing weight are actually losing muscle, not fat, because they don't actually have 5 or 10 extra pounds of fat on them.  (We're supposed to have some fat, obviously; I'm talking about clearly extraneous fat.)  Women who are trying to starve the fat off themselves are facing lost strength, osteoporosis, mineral imbalances, slowed digestion, slowed metabolism, thyroid and cortisol problems, and fatigue.

I think "calories in, calories out" is a very pernicious myth, and particularly harmful to women.  It's not that simple, and if mainstream medicine weren't so zealously puritanical about diet and exercise, they might begin to understand that.

An experiment in eating more

I hope I won't be accused of navel-gazing if I spend a few blog posts on some recent health issues.  I think a lot of stressed out people could be in the same boat I'm in.  Stress hormones like adrenalin and cortisol are helpful during short periods of danger (like the proverbial bear chasing after you in the primeval forest).  But in the longer term, consistently high cortisol makes your body think you're living through some very bad times-- think famine, or plague, or war.  Cortisol may be high for purely psychological reasons, but the body still reacts physically.  It only knows that, for whatever reason, you're in distress.  So it takes precautions by slowing your metabolism, reducing your energy level, and hanging on to fat.  It preserves your stored energy and stored nutrients, in order to protect you.

One of the ways my body did this was by converting my primary thyroid hormone (called T4) into something inert, instead of the thing it's supposed to convert into, called T3.  T3 gives you loads of energy and generally makes you feel great.  In the early days, when we first discovered my abysmally low T3 levels and I started taking supplemental T3 (Cytomel), I felt frickin' fantastic.  I mean, fantastic.  I thought the solution to all my problems had arrived and I might be able to feel like I was 19 for many more years.

[Side note: Mainstream doctors do not test T3 and would not have detected my low thyroid functioning.  They generally only test TSH (the "go" signal the brain sends to the thyroid) and T4.  My TSH and T4 were perfectly normal, not even close to being hypothyroid.  You have to demand they test T3 as well, or you won't know squat.]

I don't know precisely why my Cytomel honeymoon didn't last, but I can make a guess.  I think my body said "Whoa there....  Nice try, but you're not tricking me into running in high gear when we should be hunkering down and trying to survive," and it found some other way to reduce energy expenditures.  The human body evolved in conditions in which avoiding starvation was of prime importance.  With high cortisol levels, even when the stress is purely emotional, all those anti-starvation measures get switched to On.  Specifically, cortisol inhibits the T4 --> T3 conversion.

In most people who have normal thyroid function, exercise causes them to burn fat more rapidly, at least initially.  But many hypothyroid people don't burn more fat.  In fact, exercise may actually cause them to acquire more fat, because of differences in catecholamines (stress hormones released during exercise-- another post!).  Whatever we have always been told about the benefits of exercise, our bodies perceive it as stress.  Just think back on your long-ago ancestor running from that bear, and you can see why vigorous exercise is seen as a stressor, and not a great thing.  If you're running from bears all the time (i.e. engaging in intense cardio several days a week), your body may be able to compensate for that in a healthy way.  But if you are already stressed, either emotionally or physically, it will likely react quite defensively.  Fat burning will drop to zilch, as will metabolism and energy levels.  A simple indicator of this "energy conservation" mode is a lower than average body temperature at waking.  Here you are trying to lose weight, and your body is digging in its heels like your life depends on it.  And, in fact, the threat of starvation is not some prehistoric, long-lost situation we need no longer be adapted to.  Laura Ingalls' family was starving.  People starve in wars and revolutions and currency collapses and droughts, even in the First World in the past hundred years.  This is not foreign to modern human experience.  If you don't eat and then you exercise and plus you're emotionally stressed, your body is going to fight every energy expenditure in some very effective ways.  If you try to lose weight that way, you're fighting Mother Nature, and studies suggest your victories will be short-lived.

And that brings me to the title of the post.  My mom discovered a blog called 180 Degree Health, which is against all forms of restrictive dieting.  The author (Matt Stone, no relation to South Park) has done every crazy diet out there, including one in which he attempted to eat over 300 grams of fat per day, and another where he got most of his calories from sugar.  His conclusion is that any restriction of nutrients eventually freaks out your body and makes it worry about starving.  Maybe not right away, but eventually.  Metabolism drops, stress hormones surge, lipolysis (fat-burning) stalls, and so on.

For those individuals under stress for psychological reasons, or due to lack of sleep, lack of nutritious food, and/or vigorous exercise, Matt Stone over at 180 Degree Health recommends something he calls "rehabilitative rest and aggressive re-feeding."  (The acronym RRARF is a little unfortunate....)  The idea is to take a month and not exercise, avoid stress as much as possible, and eat and sleep "like it's your job."  Not just any food, but anything healthy.  The goal is to convince the body that everything is okay, there's plenty of good food, there's plenty of time for rest, stress is manageable.  Cortisol levels should come down, anxiety should decrease, thyroid function should improve, energy should increase, metabolism and lipolysis should speed up, and body temperature should rise.  People who are part of Stone's blog community have reported these sorts of successes after a month or two of this program.

I'm doing the aggressively over-eating thing and will let you know what happens.  Although what I eat is generally pretty healthy, I don't always eat very much.  When I stop and think about it, I'm usually concerned with what the kids are getting to eat, but not myself.  We left for a play date last week around 1pm and I realized I had forgotten to eat anything that day.  When you're hypothyroid you can suffer from little or no appetite, which I do... and that's a vicious circle.  My goals are normal cortisol, more energy, less anxiety, fewer viruses, and (longer term) normal thyroid function without medication.  I'll let you know how it goes.

 

Stuff I ate today in no order: juice from 2 grapefruits and 1 lemon, 3 clementines, 2 sm. apples, 2 fried eggs, pomegranate juice (8oz?), aloe vera juice (1oz), sm. baked potato, 2 ears corn, chicken & cheese quesadilla with sour cream and salsa, several tablespoons butter, plate of pasta with sauce and parmesan, lg. italian sausage, 2 cups of black coffee.  (I'm not supposed to have the coffee because it raises cortisol.  Wish me luck with that.)

 

The Witch of Hebron

I've now finished Jim Kunstler's latest, which I thoroughly enjoyed.  I'll just mention a few disconnected things that I liked.

The world that he's imagined looks a bit like the 19th century, but with the occasional nylon rope or carbon fiber fishing rod thrown in, salvaged from the "old times," i.e. today.  The high-tech items are irreplaceable in the new times, and are very much treasured.  In contrast, much of the old times clothing which is still being worn seems absolutely ridiculous.  In the middle of a scene in which three men are reviving a woman who's almost been killed, one of them runs to find her some more clothing.  He comes back with, among other things, a shirt featuring the Bugs Bunny Road Runner, with a speech bubble reading "beep beep."  In contrast to the rather dark drama which is unfolding, the shirt seems incredibly stupid.  And there among the descriptions of gorgeous landscapes and life-and-death struggles you have the guy in the Ben & Jerry's T-shirt with cows on it.  The inanity seems almost offensive.

The central importance of food comes through just because of the number of times it's described, which is constantly.  That's not a complaint-- it's interesting.  Roasted dandelion root "coffee" and peppermint tea; chili pepper jelly (since there's no pepper); salads of lettuce and rocket (arugula) dressed in buttermilk, honey, and cider vinegar dressing (oil is very scarce); applejack, plum brandy, and corn whiskey; wheels of hard cheese; ramekins of butter; and crocks of sauerkraut and pickles.  Again, there are the intrusions from the 20th century; one man uses his old refrigerator as a meat smoker, since the electric has been off entirely for months.  Everyone has a kitchen garden and chickens, many families have a goat, and -- if they're really lucky -- a cow.  It's October in the book, and people are relishing the last of the fresh salads, very much aware that they won't have them again till early spring when the dandelions emerge.  Where food is an afterthought today-- just a matter of which drive-through to visit, oftentimes-- the procurement of food is a constant task in the book, but it's also one of the main sources of pleasure.  Coffee, black tea, pepper, and cinnamon are very much missed.  (There's also a reminiscence about ordering a Bloomin' Onion and a rack of ribs at the Outback, back in the old times.  This was pretty funny, since it's hard to imagine Kunstler having eaten these before.)

Children in the book seem to get older faster, which is something I would expect, since I've read John Taylor Gatto on the subject of "extending childhood" via public schooling (a scheme dating back to the early 20th century).  During harvest season the one-room school is held only half a day, since the children are needed at home.

Holidays are much more important, even Halloween.  The passage of time is meaningful to everyday life in a way that it isn't today, so this only makes sense.

The plot and characters are entertaining as well, as are the linguistic changes (there's been a return of "dalgurned," "ding-danged," "this here" and "sumbitch," but only among the religious sect).  But I really just loved being immersed in an imagined future which is both better and worse than ours today.  And I think it's useful, too, because it's merely an exaggerated version of what a country staring down peak oil and hyperinflation is actually looking at: massive re-localization and simplification.  Let's hope it happens as slowly as possible so we have more time to adapt than the people in Kunstler's last two novels.

CDC deals another blow to its own credibility

Via Washington's Blog, I read that the CDC issued the following statement about the safety of Gulf seafood:

For the seafood to pose a health risk, the food would have to be heavily contaminated with oil, and would therefore have a strong odor and taste of oil.

As Washington's Blog goes through in some detail, this is just a ridiculous statement.  It pretends there is no such thing as Corexit, as if millions of gallons of this toxic (banned in the UK) junk were not pumped into the Gulf, and as if the Corexit never interacted with the oil.

In the same post we read that a NOAA Administrator thinks fish clean the oil out of the water (specifically, they "degrade" and "process" it), miraculously retaining no toxins themselves.  I mean hey, if that's the case, why didn't we just dump fish into that Alaskan bay after the Exxon Valdez ran aground?  Apparently we've been making a fuss over nothing; fish were the answer all along!

*    *    *    *    *

It feels to me like we're at a sort of maximal corruption point, in which every institution imaginable has been captured by the corporatists.  In turn, the people then lose any sense of trust in institutions generally.  Nobody believes anything anymore.  Do the people at the tops of these institutions and corporations not see that they are shooting themselves in the foot?  Does the CDC think it can lie to us again and again and again but if there's a real flu pandemic, we'll still listen to them?  Really?  Because I don't think most of us give a shit what they have to say anymore.  Not the CDC, nor the FDA, nor the USDA.  I see those acronyms and I substitute Pfeizer, Glaxo, and Monsanto; or in this case BP, Glaxo, and Monsanto.  What is the USDA good for except directing SWAT teams to Amish farms to raid their raw milk operations, or bankrupting small chicken farmers?  What is the FDA good for except harassing the makers of herbal products -- really dangerous stuff like dandelion root tea or extract of chamomile -- while refusing to take a frequently lethal medication (Vioxx) off the market?  What is the CDC good for when it ignores even mainstream scientists and scientific publications in declaring Gulf seafood safe to eat?

Regulatory capture, they call it.  It doesn't seem like a big enough phrase for a corruption so ubiquitous that it presages revolution, in whatever form that might take.

Sleep -- another benefit of homeschooling

I had read some time ago that teenagers have a different sleep cycle than children and adults do, and that they go to bed late and sleep in late for biological reasons, not psychological ones.  But until I read NurtureShock I had no idea how harmful it can be to make teenagers go to school at 7:30 in the morning.

One school district in Minnesota changed the starting time for its high school from 7:25 to 8:30.  The SAT math scores for the top 10% of students went from 683 to 739 (!).  The SAT verbal scores went from 605 to 761 (!!!).  Students reported being more motivated and being less depressed (p. 36).

Another study found that dropping below 8 hours of sleep per night doubled the risk of clinical-level depression (p. 37).  Holy cow!

When Lexington, KY moved its high school start time one hour later, the number of teenage car accidents declined by 25% (p. 37).  (Teenagers account for the majority of "fall asleep" car accidents nationally.)

Close to 2/3 of high school students report "extreme daytime sleepiness," with, depending on the survey, as many as 1 in 3 admitting to falling asleep in class at least once a week.  One in 4 say their grades have suffered due to sleepiness (p. 30).

From page 38:

Several scholars have noted that many hallmark traits of modern adolescence -- moodiness, impulsiveness, disengagement -- are also symptoms of chronic sleep deprivation.

The detrimental effects of too little sleep don't only happen to teenagers, although teens may be more likely to be sleep deprived given their changed biological sleep patterns.  But even among elementary students the results are almost hard to believe.  In one study of 4th and 6th graders, researchers found that (p. 32):

"A loss of one hour of sleep is equivalent to [the loss of] two years of cognitive maturation and development," Sadeh explained.

Did I mention that kids today (K-12) get one hour less sleep per night, on average, than they did 30 years ago?

And if all of that isn't enough, sleep deprivation also plays a major role in obesity.  Three different studies, in Japan, Canada, and Australia, determined that young kids (early elementary) who get less than 8 hours of sleep per night were 4 times more likely to be obese than those who got 10 hours or more.  9 hours showed less risk of obesity than 8 hours; 10 hours was even better (p. 41). 

A Houston study of older kids (middle and high school) suggested that each hour of lost sleep increased the odds of obesity by 80%.  There's a certain stage of sleep -- one which children spend a lot of time in -- which is critical to insulin sensitivity and glucose tolerance.  Children spend 40% of their sleep in this slow-wave stage, while adults spend only 4%, so lost sleep does far more harm to children's health than to adults' (p. 41).

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Because we homeschool, my own kids don't get up at any particular time.  My daughter (now 10) has always had sleep problems, apparently due to a genetic factor on my side of the family, which plagues certain relatives with terrible insomnia.  (You know that new-parent discussion about how old your baby was when (s)he started sleeping through the night?  Ha!  Try never.)  Luckily, melatonin is useful for Anya, though it doesn't help my mom one iota.  Some nights Anya doesn't sleep well, and she sleeps in quite late as a result.  Tristan, being only 6, seems to need variable amounts of sleep, I assume because of growth spurts.  And of course, we all need more sleep when we get sick, even if it's just a sniffle of the sort where you'd still go to school or work.  I am very thankful that my kids can sleep until they've satisfied their need for sleep.  And when Anya starts staying up till past midnight and sleeping till 10am, I'll be grateful that she can do that, too.  It's better than the alternative.