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Sleep-disordered breathing can be associated with the following:
Sleep Problems
Children who struggle to breathe properly during sleep, a condition known as sleep-disordered breathing, often have interrupted sleep and may experience episodes of sleepwalking and talking without being fully awake. This can happen because their sleep is constantly disrupted, making it harder to get deep rest.
Sleep apnea, a common sleep disorder in children, involves pauses in breathing during sleep, leading to frequent disturbances in their rest. Factors like small jaw development, enlarged tonsils or adenoids, obesity, or certain medical conditions can contribute to this problem. Symptoms may include snoring, gasping for air during sleep, restlessness, and daytime sleepiness.
Getting the right diagnosis and treatment is important to improve sleep quality and reduce the risk of sleepwalking and talking episodes.
Academic Challenges
Academic challenges occur when children experience learning difficulties in school. These difficulties can include lack of focusing and difficulty sitting still. School subjects that are impacted tend to be math, science, and spelling. It is important to assess if breathing or sleep issues are present and can impact a child’s ability to learn in school.
Sleep Disorder Breathing
When children struggle to breathe properly while they sleep, it’s called sleep-disordered breathing (SDB). This can include issues like snoring and sleep apnea, which can impact their health. One factor contributing to SDB is mouth breathing. When children habitually breathe through their mouths instead of their noses, it can change the position of their tongue and jaw, narrowing the upper airway. This increases the likelihood of airway blockage during sleep, leading to breathing problems and reduced oxygen intake. Recognizing the connection between mouth breathing and SDB is crucial for effectively addressing and managing these issues to ensure children get quality sleep and maintain good health. Using HealthyStart can assist with mouth breathing by training the tongue to remain in the correct position, potentially preventing or alleviating SDB symptoms.
Lack of Concentration
Parents should know that attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a condition where children struggle with attention span, impulse control, and hyperactivity. Recent research suggests a possible link between sleep-disordered breathing (SDB), like snoring or sleep apnea, and the development or worsening of ADHD symptoms. SDB disrupts sleep, causing oxygen levels to drop and sleep patterns to fragment, potentially leading to cognitive and behavioral issues like inattentiveness and hyperactivity, which are core symptoms of ADHD. Treating underlying sleep-disordered breathing, perhaps with HealthyStart treatment, may help improve sleep quality and could positively impact managing ADHD symptoms in children.
Snoring
Parents should be aware that snoring is a common sign of sleep-disordered breathing, such as obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), where the airway is blocked during sleep. This can cause frequent awakenings and difficulty breathing, leading to snoring sounds due to throat muscle tension. Look out for other symptoms like choking or gasping for air, restlessness during sleep, and daytime sleepiness. Getting a proper diagnosis and treatment can improve your child’s sleep quality and overall health.
Mouth Breathing
If your child often breathes through their mouth, it might indicate blocked airways. This can be linked to issues like snoring, sleep apnea, jaw problems, and poor bite, as well as difficulties with sleep, attention, and certain diseases. Unfortunately, these signs are often overlooked, leading to various health and behavioral issues.
Experts now believe that lack of sleep can mimic symptoms of ADHD. Some dentists and specialists are taking a new approach to treatment by focusing on the airways. They work on expanding the upper and lower arches of the mouth, which not only helps straighten teeth but also improves breathing. This treatment can also promote proper facial development and overall health. It’s important to address airway problems early in childhood to achieve the best results.
Disruptive Behavior
A disruptive behavior disorder occurs with lack of impulse control, oppositional behavior, negative emotions (anger, frustration), and resistances to rules Disruptive behavior which is often a result of hyperactivity and poor attention described as ADD/ADHD and is closely associated with school problems. Assessing a child’s sleep and breathing capabilities can be impacted by poor and improper habits such as mouth breathing, snoring, and low postering tongue. These habits impact the ability to breathe properly resulting in disruptive sleep.
Grinding / Clenching
Teeth grinding and clenching (bruxism) in kids can happen when there’s unusual muscle activity in their face, jaw, and throat. This can be caused by waking up often during sleep and trying to open the airway. Children who have trouble breathing while they sleep often wake up a lot and struggle to breathe properly. This can make the muscles in their face and jaw tense up, leading to teeth grinding and clenching during sleep. It can hurt their teeth and jaw. Plus, teeth grinding can make breathing problems worse by narrowing the airway, causing more wake-ups and breathing
Tonsils
When someone breathes through their mouth a lot, especially when they’re asleep, it can cause their tonsils to swell up. The air flowing through the mouth irritates the tonsils, making them bigger. Also, if the nasal passages get dry from not being used, the tonsils might try to compensate by getting larger to add moisture to the air going into the lungs.
As time goes on, this swelling and irritation can cause the tonsils to stay enlarged all the time. When they’re too big, they can block the airway, potentially leading to sleep apnea. Sleep apnea is a common sleep problem where breathing stops and starts during sleep.
Bedwetting
Bedwetting in kids might mean they have trouble breathing while they sleep. This can make them wake up often and have trouble breathing properly during the night, messing up their deep sleep. When this happens, it can mess with their ability to control their bladder, leading to bedwetting. Plus, it can also lower the production of a hormone that helps control urine production during sleep, making bedwetting worse. Getting the right diagnosis and treatment for breathing issues during sleep can help stop bedwetting and make sleep better overall.
Chronic Allergies
Research shows how common allergies are in kids who snore regularly and if having allergies could mean they’re more likely to have a sleep problem called obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS).
A study of 39 children who snored often. They visited a special clinic for kids with sleep issues. We asked them about their health and did physical exams. We also tested their blood to see if they were allergic to certain things. Then, they had a sleep test at night to check if they had OSAS and how bad it was.
They found that 14 out of the 39 kids (36%) were allergic to some things, which is more than usual for kids. Also, we noticed that kids with positive allergy tests were more likely to have OSAS compared to those with negative allergy tests (57% vs 40%).
So, it seems that allergies are pretty common in kids who snore a lot, and having allergies might mean they’re at a higher risk of having OSAS.
Speech Problems
When kids have trouble with speech delays, it’s often linked to problems with their mouth muscles. These issues can include swallowing incorrectly and pushing their tongue forward when they talk. These muscle problems can make sleep breathing not go smoothly.
When their airway gets blocked during sleep, it can lead to them waking up often and not getting good quality sleep. This can make it hard for them to focus, learn, and develop their speech and language skills properly. But if we treat the breathing issues during sleep, it can sometimes help improve their speech and language skills.
There’s also something called myofunctional therapy, which helps fix these muscle problems in the mouth. It can make breathing during sleep better and lower the chances of having breathing problems while sleeping.
Headaches
When kids have trouble breathing while they sleep, it can sometimes lead to headaches. Poor sleep quality and low oxygen levels can cause tension headaches and migraines. A common sleep problem called obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), where breathing stops and starts during sleep, can make things worse. Kids with OSA often wake up frequently during the night, which can trigger headaches.
Infants / Pacifier Breastfeeding
Breastfeeding creates the proper tongue placement, tone, and nutritional advantages to provide the ideal myofunction in the oral cavity. When assessing the impact of pacifier use, a look at the design with the nipple of the pacifier pushes the tongue down and prevents the tongue from proper placement in the palate of the mouth. When the tongue rests low in the mouth, it encourages mouth breathing, snoring and improper nasal breathing thus creating interrupted sleep patterns
Ear Infections
When a child’s jaw is small, it can lead to a narrow upper airway, which restricts the passage of air. This restriction can increase the chances of snoring and sleep-disordered breathing, both of which can contribute to ear infections.
The Eustachian tube connects the middle ear to the back of the throat and is responsible for equalizing air pressure in the ear and draining fluids from the middle ear. However, if the upper airway is narrow, the Eustachian tube may not function properly, resulting in fluid buildup in the middle ear and an increased risk of ear infections.
Impulsivity
Impulsivity is the tendency to act without much thought or an inclination to react to situations in a rapid and unthoughtful manner. Impulsive behaviors are often characterized by random actions children may demonstrate that differ from typical behavior of children within their age group. These actions can be a result of sleep and breathing disorders which can strongly impact an individual’s sociability into future years.
Nightmares / Night Terrors
If your child experiences nightmares, it could be a sign that they’re having trouble breathing while they sleep. This might cause them to wake up often and struggle to breathe properly during the night, especially during deep sleep. When they suddenly wake up during deep sleep, it can lead to scary episodes of nightmares where they scream, thrash around, and feel terrified, even though they’re still asleep. Breathing problems during sleep can also disrupt their sleep, making it less restful and increasing the chances of night terrors. But don’t worry, getting the right help for their breathing issues during sleep can lower the risk of nightmares and make their sleep much better overall.
Asthma
Having asthma and sleep-disordered breathing can make each other worse. If your child has asthma, they’re more likely to also have sleep apnea, where breathing is interrupted during sleep. This can lead to more frequent awakenings and difficulty breathing during the night, which can worsen asthma symptoms and cause more inflammation in the airways. On the other hand, sleep apnea can also worsen asthma symptoms by causing constant tiredness, reducing the lungs’ ability to exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide, and increasing oxidative stress. Treating both conditions properly is crucial for improving overall health and reducing the severity of symptoms.
Underdeveloped Jaw
If a child has trouble breathing properly through their airway, it can affect how their face and jaw grow. Normally, the airway allows air to flow smoothly between the mouth, nose, and lungs, which helps teeth and jaws develop correctly. But when there’s a problem with the airway, it can lead to issues over time. If left untreated, these problems can cause more health issues for the child and can even change how their face looks as they grow up. That’s why it’s important to find and treat these airway problems early. By doing so, we can help make sure the child stays healthy and their face and jaw develop properly.
Crowded Teeth
Breathing through the mouth instead of the nose can cause issues with teeth and the way they grow. Normally, the tongue rests against the roof of the mouth, helping it grow and stay wide enough for all the teeth. But when a child breathes through their mouth a lot, their tongue doesn’t press against the roof of the mouth like it should. This can make the roof of the mouth narrow and leave less space for the teeth to come in properly. As a result, the teeth might become crowded and crooked.
Breathing through the mouth can also affect how the muscles in the mouth work. This imbalance can put extra pressure on the teeth, leading to problems with how they fit together.
Early treatment can help kids learn to breathe through their nose more. This can stop these problems from getting worse and help their teeth and face develop correctly.
Arrested Growth and Development
Improper growth and deficient development can occur at any age. These deficiencies that occur in the oral cavity are usually referred to as malocclusions and currently appear in 92% of children and can impact the ability to breathe, the ability for proper development of the dentition, proper functionality and the ability for proper occlusion.
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Memory (M) impairments have been suggested in pediatric Obstructive Sleep Apnea along with attention and executive (AE), language (L), and visuospatial (V) dysfunctions. NEPSY assessment of children aged 5-9 years who were either healthy.