A Trip to the Dentist
“At a cleaning, Kian’s dentist makes an offhand comment about his teeth — they were ground almost [halfway] down, he’s grinding his teeth at night.”
That was when everything changed. At the perfect time, Melody stumbled across an article in the Washington Post that studied the connection between ADHD, sleep-disordered breathing, and mouth breathing.
“Every word in this article sounded like Kian. This led me down a rabbit hole of research (the majority of which was done right in our back yard at the National Institute[s] of Health) where I learned the following:
- Mouth breathing is NOT NORMAL and has long term consequences for health. I’ll repeat, because this is important — MOUTH BREATHING IS NOT NORMAL, NOT DURING THE DAY OR AT NIGHT. When a child breathes through their mouth, their brain (and body) is not getting enough oxygen. At night, this lowered oxygen saturation is detrimental to the quality of sleep and their brain’s ability to get enough rest.
- When the mouth is open, the tongue cannot rest in the correct place. Over time this can lead to incorrect development of the upper jaw — narrow and high palette, a recessed lower jaw (overjet and overbite can form), speech problems (r/l mispronunciation) and misaligned teeth. These developments narrow the airways and worsen the problem. Medical professionals have a term for the resulting ‘long’ face caused by these changes — ‘Adenoid face.’
- When sleeping, in addition to the decreased oxygen, the recessed jaw can cut off the airway completely and contribute to sleep apnea in children. To compensate, the body wakes the child and pushes the jaw forward, resulting in disrupted sleep cycles and tooth grinding (bruxism).
“Here’s the kicker,” she says:
- Sleep deprivation in children and ADHD exhibit the same symptoms. The EXACT SAME SYMPTOMS. Studies have been done (thanks, NIH) where they took medicated ADHD kids, fixed the sleep-disordered breathing, and within [six] months 70 [percent] of the children had seen a resolution in symptoms and were no longer medicated. As in, their ‘ADHD’ was cured. Because it wasn’t ADHD. In 70 [percent] of children. Let that sink in. This means that 70 [percent] of those children had been misdiagnosed with ADHD, when they actually had a treatable sleep disorder.
- Stimulants — Of course, they work, until they don’t. If you are sleep deprived, taking a stimulant will, of course, help you focus and feel ‘normal.’ But the brain is never fully resting — and hence the side effects that pop up: nervousness, agitation, anxiety, sleep problems (insomnia), stomach pain, loss of appetite, weight loss, nausea, and suicidal ideation.
Melody puts it like this: Imagine yourself after three days of sleep deprivation. Now multiply that by 100, and then add a stimulant like caffeine or something even stronger into the mix. “How do you think you’ll feel once you start coming down from that?” she asks.
After doing some hard long research, Melody finally got Kian to see an ENT (ears, nose, and throat specialist).
Following an eye-opening sleep study, Kian was diagnosed with sleep apnea and sinusitis.
“He got exactly 0 minutes of REM sleep during the first study, and oxygen saturation in the low 80 [percent] and his sinuses were 90 [percent] blocked. We had no idea that Kian had a headache daily, but it was just his normal so he never thought to tell us. Kian had his tonsils and adenoids removed and the change was immediate. He could breathe through his nose as soon as he came out of surgery, where he couldn’t when they wheeled him in.”
Melody says they have seen a “complete 180” in Kian’s behavior.
“No more angry tantrums, no more fixation on little OCD things, it’s been an enormous change. And we haven’t even finished the second step — fixing his jaw and tongue issues that developed during the course of undiagnosed sleep apnea. Our follow-up sleep study? [Three hundred sixty] minutes of REM sleep, and oxygen saturation above the minimum threshold. No behavior reports in school. His appetite has exploded, he’s no longer a picky eater, and he had a huge growth spurt [two] weeks after the surgery. He still has mild sleep apnea, but the frequency in the night was cut in half, and the duration of each episode was cut in half. If we see this much of a change now, I can only imagine how much it will improve once we cross the finish line.”
