Importance of Healthy Breathing and Academic Performance

I want to share very interesting findings about strong correlation between healthy breathing, academic performance, behavior, attention and executive function.

There is clear evidence for poorer academic performance in school-age children with Sleep Disorder Breathing (SDB)

Findings from “Sleep Disordered Breathing and Academic Performance: A Meta-analysis” by Barbara Galland, Karen Spruyt, Patrick Dawes, Philippa S. McDowall, Dawn Elder, Elizabeth Schaughency http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/136/4/e934.full

Children and adults with sleep disorders were at a higher risk for language problems than healthy sleepers.  The language problems typically co-occurred with problems of attention and executive function (in children and adults), behavior (in children), and visual-spatial processing (in adults). Effects were typically small. Language problems seldom rose to a level of clinical concern but there were exceptions involving phonological deficits in children with sleep-disordered breathing and verbal memory deficits among adults with sleep-disordered breathing or idiopathic REM sleep behavior disorder.

Findings from “Airway function disorders can interfere with language, learning and academics,

Sleep Disorders as a Risk to Language Learning and Use” by Karla K. McGregor and Rebecca M. Alper https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4672866/

Children with fragmented sleep were characterized by lower performance on NBF measures, particularly those associated with more complex tasks such as a continuous performance test and a symbol-digit substitution test. These children also had higher rates of behavior problems as reported by their parents on the Child Behavior Checklist. These results highlight the association between sleep quality, NBF, and behavior regulation in child development; and raise important questions about the origins of these associations and their developmental and clinical significance.

Findings from “Sleep, Neurobehavioral Functioning, and Behavior Problems in School-Age Children” by Avi Sadeh, Reut Gruber, Amiram Raviv

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1111/1467-8624.00414/abstract

Sleep-related obstructive breathing disorders (SROBD) are common in children. While the sequelae of cor pulmonae, and growth and developmental impairment have been well documented, neurocognitive deficits have been less well studied. There is emerging evidence that children with SROBD show reduced neurocognitive functioning especially in the inter-related areas of attentional capacity, memory and cognitive function. In addition, these children show increased problematic behaviour and reduced school performance.

Findings from “Cognitive and behavioural performance in children with sleep-related obstructive breathing disorders” by S. Blunden, K. Lushington, D. Kennedy

http://www.smrv-journal.com/article/S1087-0792(01)90165-0/abstract