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Sleep disorder among kids in Texas rising

Written by: David Castillo on February 28th, 2011

Sleep disorder among kids in Texas rising | read this item

A sleep doctor has diagnosed an alarmingly increasing number of young people having extreme sleeping disorders. Working at a pediatric sleep clinic in Plano, Dr. Hilary Pearson says that “obstructive sleep apnea is seen in anywhere from three to five percent of kids,” adding that “that’s actually a high percentage for a medical condition to be occurring.”

High rates of childhood obesity and allergies in Texas have been found to be partially responsible for the sleeping disorder problem amongst kids. Pearson shares that she tends “to see just as much of obesity as a problem as the enlarged tonsils and adenoids which can go along with the skinny kids that have allergies and were premature babies.”

Meanwhile, a lot of parents are unaware of the problem and can barely recognize symptoms of sleep apnea that their children show. Heather Calvert always suspected that her son’s headaches had stemmed from allergies, unaware that lack of sleep was causing his son Nathaniel to develop attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder.

Source: WFAA.com