So I was watching our son sleep soundly on the couch for about 4 hours today (we placed him on his belly before dinner).  He was so content and in a deep restful sleep. The minute we place him on his back (per recommendations) he become more alert and has more difficulty sleeping. During this time I was watching our daughter bounce off the walls (she didn’t take her nap today) and I was thinking about all those organophosphate laden  blueberry’s she has eaten.  This of course has been linked recently in a study with an increasing incidence of ADHD. We are just hoping those last couple weeks of fish oil during Wendy’s pregnancy will add some kind of counter attack for all those hard working neural connections.  Of course this is probably the equivalent of drinking diet soda with a whopper meal… Anyway, to get to my point. There are many theories as to why the incidence of ADHD has been on the rise. No matter what your feelings are regarding this topic (and trust me everyone has a different opinion) it affects many people and many families, and many children. Maybe we just need a paradigm shift in our culture and our schools, maybe kids need less Nintendo, many people believe it is because kids do not get enough sleep. And this is where I had my revelation. BACK TO SLEEP!

Enter Google search:

So the back to sleep program began in 1997 when it was found to greatly decrease the prevalence of SIDS, prior to this  in 1992 less than 13% of kids slept on their back at night here is a graph from the National Center of Health Statistics:

 

As you can see there was a greater than 50% reduction in SIDS rates directly correlated to a baby’s sleeping position. Wow, this is a no brainer: Back to sleep it is.

But as I was watching our son sleep I couldn’t help but notice just how much better he sleeps on his tummy. He has been waking up several times at night, and has difficulty napping on his back during the day. The American Academy of Pediatrics has directly linked ADHD with childhood sleep disturbances…. Enter my thought. Could ADHD be linked in any way to childhood sleep positions?

Again Enter Google Search:

Here is a graph (sorry the best one I could find) showing ADHD rates during a similar time period, this is from the CDC:

 

In this graph we see that ADHD rates increased 3% per year since 1997, incidentally there was no change in the rates of learning disabilities.

So lets think about this:  3% per year from 1997-2003 is equal to 3% per year  x  7 years is equal to 21% over 7 years. Now how about the ADHD data?  Well from 1997 back sleeping went up from 53.1% of the population to 72.8% in 2003 that is an increase of about 19.7%. That is  equivalent to approximately 2.84% increase per year for back sleepers. From this data we can see that the annual increase in ADHD is almost identical to the annual increase in back sleepers: 3% and 2.84% respectively.

I think this is very interesting! And I was surprised to see this. We know how much sleep disturbances in adults, the elderly and young children can negatively impact  both behavior and cognition. In kids we see a big performance drop in school directly related to hours of sleep. Could there be a link to increased sleep disturbance in infants and back sleeping? And could this sleep disturbance negatively effect the developing brain?  These I think are good questions to ask, and difficult to answer, as the only way to prove this theory is to randomly assign a subset of kids to sleep on their backs and another to sleep on their bellies and see if there is any difference in ADHD rates. Although with the drop of SIDS so significant with back sleeping this may be difficult to do. It would be interesting to see if certain cultures which have lower levels of ADHD may also not adhere to a back sleeping program.

All this and I still finished dinner. And my daughter, well she is sleeping like a baby!!!!