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Obese Women More Likely to Have Children with Autism

Here’s a not-to-surprising study showing that obese women are at higher risk of having children with autism. Obese women were 67% more likely to have an autistic child, and about 2x as likely to have an child with another developmental disorder. Having gestational diabetes also raised by 2x a mother’s risk of having a baby with developmental disorders.

They also note that nearly 60% of women of childbearing age in the US is overweight and about 1/3 are obese. Obesity rates are rapidly climbing. Autism rates are also climbing, with the latest report showing 1/88 children having one of the autism spectrum disorders.

The authors mentioned every possible explanation (diabetes, high blood pressure, fluctuating glucose levels, lack of oxygen) expect for obstructive sleep apnea. I’ve written numerous times in the past about complications of obstructive sleep apnea during pregnancy. If you’re overweight or obese, you’re much more likely to have obstructive sleep apnea. One of the hallmarks of sleep apnea is hypoxia and major physiologic stress on the mother’s body. I wonder what the effect is on the developing baby’s brain? It would make sense to routinely screen for sleep apnea in all women, especially if you’re overweight or heavier.

If you were overweight during pregnancy, did your doctor screen you for obstructive sleep apnea? 

How Many Hours Should Your Child Sleep Every Night?

How many hours should your child be sleeping? A new study found that opinions vary significantly amongst sleep experts, but the bottom line is that we’ve been saying for over 100 years that children need to sleep more. Unfortunately, the media has put a spin on this research, concluding that you should “never trust sleep experts.”

While it is true that we’ve been saying children need more sleep for years, critics are saying that there’s no evidence that children actually need more sleep. I beg to differ. It’s been reported that teens in one competitive high school sleeps an average 5-6 hours per night. We know from hundreds of studies that eve 1-2 hours of chronic sleep deprivation leads to significant declines in cognitive and behavioral measures. Adults need about 7-8 hours per night. Teens need about 8 to 9 hours per night, school-aged children, 10-11, and 3-6 year olds, anywhere from 10-12.

I know from personal experience that some of my 9 year old son’s classmates get 6-7 hours per night. I even blogged about seeing parents bring their preschool children with them to see a movie that ended at midnight. Granted everyone has different sleep needs, but if you’re saying a child can function normally on 3-5 hours of regular sleep deprivation every night, you’re fooling yourself. If your child is functioning normally, it’s more likely that he or she is being medicated with stimulants.

What’s more important than the number of hours you sleep is the quality of your sleep. Even if your child is able to sleep 10 hours per night, if she stops breathing even 1-5 times per hour, then by definition, it’s going to cause problems, whether it manifests in physical, emotional, or behavioral ways. What’s worse is if you don’t sleep efficiently, and you sleep less than you should, it’s a double whammy. We know that chronic sleep deprivation can also increase cravings for fatty, sugary foods, and promote weight gain. Sleep length has been directly linked to weight in children. No wonder there’s also an obesity epidemic in children these days.

How long do your children sleep? How much longer should they be sleeping?

How Finger Foods for Babies Can Prevent Obesity

Modern life leads to a number of unexpected consequences. Here’s an interesting study showing that infants that are weaned from liquid diets to finger foods rather than being spoon-fed pureé diets are much less likely to be obese later in life. In spite of the fact that infants in the spoon-fed group were offered more fruits, carbohydrates, vegetables and proteins, they wound up preferring  sweets more than the self-fed children. 

The most likely explanation is that early mechanical stimulation of the gums and teeth leads to more optimal dental and jaw development. This goes along with Dr. Corrucinni’s work showing that eating softer foods is associated with a higher risk of malocclusion and dental crowding. Dental crowding, by definition, increases your risk of obstructive sleep apnea by crowding your breathing passageways. Bottle-feeding can also aggravate dental crowding as well. 

Hypothyroidism in Pregnancy Goes Largely Undiagnosed

Researchers combed through 117,892 Quest Diagnsotics records and found that about 15% of women tested positive for gestational diabetes. Based on this finding, they estimate that as many as 483,000 women with gestational diabetes may go undiagnosed every year. Asian women had the highest rates of being tested and being positive for this condition, and older women and overweight women were much more likely to be tested during pregnancy. 

Hypothyroidism during pregnancy can lead to lower IQ scores in children after birth. 

I’ve written extensively before that pregnancy increases your chances of sleep-breathing problems, especially in light of significant weight gain that occurs. Gaining weight is a major risk factor for obstructive sleep apnea, which has been shown to significantly increase your risk or diabetes and hypertension. Any form of physiologic stress can has been shown to lower your thyroid levels as well. You don’t have to have obstructive sleep apnea to have significant breathing problems at night.

Having low thyroid levels can also promote weight gain. Poor sleep quality also promotes weight gain. Weight gain narrows your throat, causing more breathing problems. It’s a vicious cycle. Regardless of which comes first (sleep apnea or hypothyroidism), it’s a two-way street.

If you consider that our population as a whole is now heavier, and women are having babies at much later ages, then hypothyroidism is one of many conditions related to sleep-breathing problems and pregnancy that is expected to increase in numbers.

 

Browse several inpatient drug rehab centers!

Sleep: The Missing Link in Weight Loss

Tara Parker-Pope, New York Times health columnist, wrote a great article in last week’s Times Magazine called, “The Fat Trap.” She details a poignant account of her personal struggles with obesity, and the various scientific studies that support the notion that there are a number of genetic, biochemical and environmental factors that prevent certain people from losing weight. 

But one thing that was clearly missing in her article was the importance of getting a good night’s sleep. There are a number of reasons why most modern Americans are not getting enough sleep.

A National Sleep Foundation poll in 2005 showed that Americans averaged 6.9 hours of sleep per night, which is about one hour less per night compared with 50 years ago. Furthermore, our sleep duration has dropped another 20 minutes since 2001. Invasion of technology has been blamed as one major factor, as cellphones, computers, and various media options are rampant in today’s society. The bad economy is also thought to create more insomnia and diminished total sleep times.

Not only has our sleep duration dropped, but the quality of our sleep is dropping even further. Obesity is a major risk factor for having obstructive sleep apnea. As obesity has reached epidemic proportions in the United States, it’s likely that rates of obstructive sleep apnea has increased as well. Untreated obstructive sleep apnea, by causing multiple breathing interruptions, prevents continuous, quality deep sleep. It also significantly increases your future risk of developing heart disease, heart attack, stroke and motor vehicle accidents.

A healthy diet, portion control, and regular exercise are cornerstones of most diets or weight loss programs. But without good quality sleep, your chances of losing a significant amount of weight and keeping is off is relatively low. One major reason for this is that poor sleep promotes weight gain. It’s been shown that hormonally and metabolically, one tends to either gain weight, or has difficulty losing weight, no matter how much you diet or exercise.

One great example was reported by Glamour Magazine in 2009: Seven women of varying weights were told to sleep at least 7.5 hours every night. After 10 weeks, 6 of the 7 women lost anywhere from 6 to 15 pounds, without any changes in their eating or exercise habits. The one woman that didn’t lose any weight did lose 2.5 inches off her waist, bust and hips.

This just goes to show that unless you can optimize sleep, losing weight through dieting and/or exercise won’t work as well, or last.

If you’re currently dieting, have you incorporated an optimal sleep program into your weight loss regimen?

Teens & Sleep Deprivation: An Epidemic

Everyone knows that teens are under intense pressure to not only produce stellar grades, but also excel in numerous extracurricular activities as well. The problem is that there’s only 24 hours in a day. Add to this 4-6 hours of homework in the most competitive private and public high schools, and the first thing to get sacrificed is sleep. 

In this New York Times article on the stresses of too much homework in independent schools, one student newspaper at a prestigious private school published an article last year showing that upper school students slept an average of 6.5 hours per night. I was shocked to see this.  You may think that this is not too bad, but consider this: A teenager should be sleeping 9 to 10 hours per night. 

There are tomes of research showing what chronic long-term sleep deprivation does for people in general, but these negative effects are even more magnified in developing teens’ brains and bodies. It’s not surprising that rate of anxiety and depression are are at already too high levels, and a lot of students are just burning out (mentally and physically). Many of these problems will ultimately manifest when they get to college, where sleep deprivation and poor eating and sleep habits become even worse. This is why the incidence of depression peaks in the college years. 

I realize there’s no easy solution to this problem, but someone has to take a stand and say enough is enough. What do you think about this issue?

Depression Ups Your Stroke Risk

A recent study revealed that having depression was found to increase the risk of having a stroke by 45% in people who were followed from 2 to 29 years. Your risk of dying from a stroke also increases by 55%. The article talks about people with depression being more overweight. What else can being overweight cause?

We know that having insomnia significantly increases your risk of developing depression later on in life. Having untreated severe obstructive sleep apnea also significantly increases your chances of having a stroke. Not sleeping well from any reason (insomnia or sleep apnea) can cause major biochemical and structural changes in your brain. Do you see the connection? 

How Being Fat Can Cause Dementia

Being overweight has been associated with a number of medical problems, including diabetes, heart disease, and even cancer. Now a new study shows that being overweight in midlife significantly increases your chances of developing dementia later in life. You can read a summary of the study here.

The researchers are unclear about the reason for this observation, but do suggest the possibility that inflammation from being overweight, or diabetes and cardiovascular complications, can damage brain cells. What they’re majorly missing is the fact that the more overweight you are, the more likely you’ll have obstructive sleep apnea. Obstructive sleep apnea is a major cause of hypoxia and brain injury. I’ve written numerous times in the past that sleep apnea has be shown to directly cause brain tissue injury, especially in areas that control memory, executive function, and even autonomic nervous system center that control breathing and heart rate.

What’s your take on this article?

Higher Pregnancy Complications In Obese Women

A new study published this week in the Journal Human Reproduction found that obese pregnant women have a much higher chance of miscarriage or suffering from their child dying before the first birthday. Not too surprisingly, pre-eclampsia was the most common reason for these obesity-related deaths. Gestational diabetes increased as well.

We know that any significant weight gain can lead to obstructive sleep apnea. Then why is it that pregnant women don’t develop sleep apnea? One possible reason why this may not happen as often is that progesterone increases significantly during pregnancy. Progesterone is an upper airway muscle stimulant, increasing tongue muscle tone significantly. This is one way it protects against apnea-promoting effects of weight gain.

However, if you gain too much weight, or if there are other stresses in your life that hormonally diminishes the protective effects of progesterone, then you’ll have more problems breathing at night, leading to or aggravating various pregnancy complications. High blood pressure (seen in pre-eclampsia), and diabetes are more likely in people with sleep apnea.

What’s just as important is what happens after delivery: Progesterone drops, but you’re left with all that weight. By definition, your sleep quality will drop significantly. This is one mechanism that can aggravate post-partum depression. Imagine how much worse it may be if you also lose your child.

If you’re a woman and are overweight and have sleep apnea, did you suffer any miscarriages or pregnancy complications in the past?

Are Ear Infections Linked to Childhood Obesity?

Here’s another interesting connection with an explanation that may surprise you. Researchers in South Korea found that children with chronic otitis media had measurable taste changes that could explain why these same children tended to be more overweight. This link between chronic otitis media and obesity has been made before, but this is the first time researchers showed what was suspected as a possible culprit: That chronic inflammation of the middle ear can adversely affect the taste-sensing chord tympani nerve, which travels through the middle ear. They showed that children with chronic otitis media had reduced taste capacity to sense sweet and salty flavors, and that this could make children eat more.

The problem with this study is that it doesn’t prove that having fluid in the middle ear causes obesity. It only shows a relationship. What’s more plausible is that these children have significant sleep-breathing problems that can lead to both ear infections and increased weight. We know that obstructive sleep apnea can lead to pharyngeal and nasal inflammation, which can prevent proper eustachian tube function. Poor sleep from poor breathing also promotes weight gain by increasing one’s appetite for sugary, fatty foods.

 

 

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