The Relation Between Developing Childhood Obesity, TV Watching, Electronic Media and Sleeping Hours

We aimed to study associations between the childhood obesity, sleep duration and screen time regarding watching TV and using computer. Methodology: Our study included 72 patients between < 6 and 18 years, of the 72 children 38 obese children (52.8%) and 34 control cases (47.2%) have been recruited from the outpatient clinic of Pediatrics at National Nutritional Institute from September 2013 to March 2014 using anthropometric measurements, sleeping hours during daytime and weekends, TV watching & computer hours. Results: In our study, there was 33 male child, 16 (48.5%) of them were obese and 17 (51.5%) were in the control group, there was 39 female child, 22 (56.4%) of them were obese while 17 (50%) were in the control group (43.6%). The mean BMI of the obese group was 31.5 ± 6.1 while the control group was 14.5 ± 1.3. But in day sleep there was significant correlation between number of hours that the child sleeps during the day and there was significant correlation between the number of hours spending in watching TV and childhood obesity, during weekends obese children watch TV more than controls but in terms of using computer, the controls spend more hours using computer in the weekends than the obese group. There was an insignificant relation between the number of hours in outdoor playing on the weekdays between both groups while on weekends there was significant correlation between numbers of spent in outdoors playing and obesity. Conclusion: Obese children sleep more during the day on the weekdays and the weekends but not at night. During weekends obese children watch TV more but in terms of using computers, the controls spend more hours using computer at the weekends. During weekends obese children play outdoors less than the controls.