It's official: active kids sleep better

London, July 31 (ANI): A new study has confirmed what many parents already knew - running around in the day means your child may fall asleep faster at night.

The study of 500 children also found that children who fall asleep faster tend to stay asleep for longer.

The study, by experts from Monash University in Melbourne and the University of Auckland, has been published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood.

To reach the conclusion, researchers looked at 519 seven-year-olds, reports The BBC.

The majority fell asleep within 45 minutes, and the average "sleep latency" - the time it took - was 26 minutes, the study found.

Physically active kids tended to take less time to fall asleep, but the more prominent association was between being sedentary and taking longer to drift off.

"As short sleep duration is associated with obesity and lower cognitive performance, community emphasis on the importance of promoting healthy sleep in children is vitally important," the researchers wrote.

"This study emphasises the importance of physical activity for children, not only for fitness, cardiovascular health and weight control, but also for sleep," they added. (ANI)