About 2 percent of all children snore in their sleep. Snoring can be benign, but can also be a sign of a more serious condition. In general children who snore are receiving less restful sleep, and some cases can be so severe it borders or sleep apnea.
A study published recently in the journal Obesity found that moderate exercise alone is enough to reduce snoring in children.
Snoring is associated with obesity, but it is unclear which is the primary cause. Being overweight can lead to snoring by compressing the airways, but snoring and getting inadequate rest can also cause fatigue and contribute to weight gain.
In addition, children who snore can develop learning disabilities because of lack of rest, and some may even exhibit symptoms similar to ADHD.
The study, conducted at the Medical College of Georgia, enrolled 100 overweight children and randomized them to one of three groups. The first group received forty minutes of exercise per day, the second twenty minutes, and the third group did not perform any additional physical activity.
At onset of the study more than 25 percent of parents reported some snoring in their offspring.
At conclusion of the study more than half of the children who snored and were in either of the exercise groups reported resolution. Results were even better in the group who did forty minutes a day.
And the authors stated that weight loss was not a factor in the resolution of snoring, so some other mechanism was causing this effect.
At any rate, a moderate amount of exercise alone was enough to cause resolution of snoring in more than half of the overweight children in this study. It is such a minor activity that may have positive effects on performance in school, development, growth, and general well being.
Posted by Dr. Christina Gutierrez on December 4, 2006 02:02 PM
