Snoring May Stunt Children’s Growth
March 1st, 2009 by Kathy Sena
Parents should pay attention to the quality of their kids’ sleep, because snoring and other nighttime breathing problems could stunt a child’s growth, according to a study led by researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University in New York City.
As many as one in five children experience breathing problems during sleep, such as snoring, mouth breathing, or apnea (abnormally long pauses in breathing). Researchers have long suspected these problems collectively known as sleep disordered breathing (SDB) contribute to growth delays in children. SDB interrupts deep sleep, a period of the sleep cycle when the body typically secretes large amounts of growth hormone. Children with SDB are thought to produce a smaller amount of growth hormone.
Many studies have involved children with enlarged tonsils and/or adenoids, the principal causes of SDB. (Other causes include obesity, neuromuscular weakness of airway muscles, and craniofacial abnormalities.) All the children had their tonsils/adenoids surgically removed, either to treat symptoms of SDB, to treat recurrent infection or both. They were then monitored to measure the impact of the surgery — which usually cures the problem — on growth.
Researchers found significant increases in both height and weight following surgery, according to Bonuck, whose research was published online in the medical journal Archives of Disease in Childhood. “In other words, while all the children were expected to continue to grow after they underwent surgery, their growth rates were much greater than expected.”
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that pediatricians screen all children for SDB symptoms during well-child visits. “Parents are typically asked how their child is sleeping, but this is often taken to mean total sleep time, rather than sleep quality,” says Bonuck. Parents should be alert to symptoms of SDB, particularly habitual snoring. Symptoms tend to peak during the preschool years. Such monitoring may help prevent growth delays in children from occurring in the first place, she says.