subject: Is It Actually Possible For Children To Have Problems With Sleep Apnea? [print this page] Is It Actually Possible For Children To Have Problems With Sleep Apnea?
We quite often are likely to view children and kids as being a great deal less vulnerable to poor medical problems when compared with adults, as though their youthfulness and innocence somehow makes them far more resistant to infection and disease. Regrettably, this is not the situation, not even having a supposedly "adult" problem such as sleep apnea. Obstructive sleep apnea-as differentiated from central sleep apnea-is a typical condition in youngsters which is generally recognized as producing poor attention span and erratic behavior that can damage a child's school performance. Sleep apnea arises whenever a person experiences several breathing pauses as well as short breaths while asleep. The breathing disruptions characteristically occur between 5 and 30 or more times every hour on 3 or even more nights per week. The breathing pauses can last as little as a few seconds or sometimes as long as minutes. Either way, the brain recognizes that your body wants oxygen and strengthens the breathing actions, causing the person to regress from deep sleep to light sleep as they gasp for air. As a consequence, the person fails to achieve lasting deep sleep and goes through the next day feeling drowsy. In adults, obstructive apnea is frequently experienced by persistent snoring and it is commonly associated with being noticeably overweight. In children, however, snoring may not be an indicator (10-20 percent of healthy children snore) and obesity often ceases to be a contributing factor. The following is a list of factors frequently related to children who are suffering from obstructive apnea: breathing through the mouth because of upper airway occlusion, enlarged tonsils and adenoids, restless sleep, weight reduction or poor putting on weight, excessive daytime sleepiness and cognitive and behavioral problems including poor attention span, hyperactivity and aggressive behavior. Once a pediatric ear, nose and throat specialist or a sleep specialist determines that your child has obstructive apnea; a tonsillectomy or adenoidectomy may be performed to resolve the problem, these being the most common cures for childhood apnea. But when enlarged tonsils and adenoids aren't a contributing factor, your child may be recommended for a polysomnogram-a painless overnight procedure performed in a sleep clinic which involves placing small sensors about the head, face, chest and finger to chart vital signs and muscle movements while the patient sleeps. Like several sleep issues, obstructive apnea can result in a weakened immune system that compromises an individual's capability to fight off infection and disease. Therefore, addressing apnea is important to a lot more than the advance of your child's overall behavior and attention span. Children who exhibit a failure to focus in many cases are prescribed medications that treat attention deficit disorder (ADD), but when apnea is the underlying cause of your child's short attention span, such medications only serve to mask the the signs of apnea. ADD often occurs without the presence of apnea, but for the sake of your child's immune system and the or ability to achieve restful sleep, it makes sense to make contact with an ear nose and throat specialist or a sleep medicine clinic before surmising that your child suffers from non-apnea induced ADD.
