> I'm a mostly "lurking" R.D. and LC wannabee.  I heard information from
> a  local Milwaukee, Wisconsin paper on the snoring/ADD issue.  A local
> hospital is doing tests on this and are concluding that some of these
> ADD kids are misdiagnosed and are in fact sleep deprived or have apnea.
> Some of these kids have  their ADD symptoms disappear when the
> apnea/snoring issues are resolved.  I will try to get the date on the
> paper if anyone is interested. The hospital is  Children's Hospital.

I am working on a book on children with emotional disturbance and mental
illness and am quite interested in the relationship between ADD and ED and
sleep.  I just read several studies on sleep issues and they seem to
indicate a few things...first is that children with ED do have associated
sleep disturbance more than those with ADD/H although it depends on the
specific parasomnia.

One study showed ADD/H to be correlated to frontal lobe dysfunction.
Another study suggests that problems with initiating and maintaining sleep
are also due to frontal lobe dysfunction.

Also, one study compared children with ADD/H with siblings without ADD/H.
The results showed that the ADD/H kids had poorer sleep when compared to
their sibs but the sibs had poorer sleep when compared to the controls (no
family hx of ADD/H).

There does seem to be a vicious cycle...poor sleep leads to poor behavior
and conversely, whatever in the child is causing ADD/H behaviors may also
contribute to/cause poor sleep.  Poor kids can't win.

In my experience with children with ED or other mental illnesses, sleep
issues seem to be a universal concern.  There have been 2 (I think) studies
showing that parents of ADD/H kids *perceive* sleep problems but when
measured quantitatively, they are in a range of normal.  One possible cause
for this is that after dealing with an ADD/H kid all day you just want them
to GO TO BED and any delay or night waking seems excessive!

My son (with bi-polar disorder, ADHD and autism) has very poor sleep.  He is
usually up until after 11:00-11:30 and it is like trying to wake the dead in
the morning.  He has the typical ED bedtime resistance and poor arousal.  He
gets more and more manic as the evening wears on.  He absolutely cannot turn
off...it is tiring just watching him and he usually out lasts me in the
evening.  He is 11 but this has been his MO since he was an infant.  And, to
keep this on-topic, not even breastfeeding would relax him!

He has had a sleep study which showed a wide variety of sleep disturbances,
including very mild, non-obstructive apnea.

Sleep, or lack of sleep, rules our lives!!

Kathy Koch, MEd, IBCLC

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