Children's Health Defense By
Poor sleep may increase obesity risk in ADHD
Understanding health behaviors that modify the risk for obesity in ADHD; Journal of Pediatric Psychology, March 21, 2024.
Children who aren’t treated for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have a greater risk of becoming obese than those who receive treatment, according to a recent study. The reason: inadequate sleep.
Based on earlier work suggesting that inadequate sleep, limited physical activity and excessive screen time might explain the ADHD-obesity link, investigators examined those factors among three groups: children with ADHD on medication, untreated ADHD patients and unaffected, untreated children (the control group).
The 26,644 subjects, ages 11-17, were enrolled in the 2018 and 2019 National Survey of Children’s Health.
Researchers reported that medicated ADHD children had about the same obesity risk as kids without ADHD, but untreated ADHD subjects had a 7% higher risk of being obese than treated children.
The only behavioral difference, according to the authors, was that on average, untreated children slept fewer hours than treated children.
This result was only deemed significant when researchers applied a correction to their data for the subjects’ socioeconomic status.
These results should be taken with a grain of salt, however, as ADHD medications themselves, which are stimulants, affect sleep and appetite.
Biotics help some childhood diseases, but with caveats.
Biotics and Children’s and Adolescents’ Health: A Narrative Review; Children, March 9, 2024.
A review of studies published up to October 2023 reported that ingesting biotics improved or prevented several childhood and adolescent health conditions, including diarrhea (both without and after antibiotic administration), colitis (intestinal inflammation), colic, abdominal pain, irritable bowel syndrome, infection by the bacterium Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) (mainly responsible for stomach ulcers) and atopic dermatitis, an inflammatory skin disorder.
A biotic is anything that promotes the presence of healthy bacteria. Biotics include foods, supplements or probiotic bacteria.
Good, but less conclusive evidence suggests that biotics may improve autism spectrum disorder, ADHD, adult obesity and respiratory infections.
The authors also caution against using biotics in people with “severe underlying diseases.” Those include immunocompromised individuals, premature infants, those with heart disease or who are undergoing treatments involving catheters, or individuals at risk for infection from the biotic organisms.
READ FULL ARTICLE HERE… (childrenshealthdefense.org)
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