3 ms·
Diagnosing the Wrong Deficit
- skmurphy 13y agoKey insight: sleep disorder, in particular insufficient delta sleep, may cause symptoms similar to ADHD The patient didn’t have A.D.H.D., I realized, but a chronic sleep deficit. A number of studies have shown that a huge proportion of children with an A.D.H.D. diagnosis also have sleep-disordered breathing like apnea or snoring, restless leg syndrome or non-restorative sleep, in which delta sleep is frequently interrupted. One study, published in 2004 in the journal Sleep, looked at 34 children with A.D.H.D. Every one of them showed a deficit of delta sleep, compared with only a handful of the 32 control subjects.