Focus, Attention, & Behavior Problems

While sleep apnea and other breathing disorders affect a person’s ability to get a full night’s sleep, evidence suggests that sleep-disordered breathing can contribute to a wide array of additional health and behavioral problems.

Breathing disorders that occur during sleep can affect daily life in several facets, including:

• Attention span: Sleep-disordered breathing can make it difficult for both children and adults to focus on school lessons or conversations.
• Self-care: Sleep-disordered breathing may increase forgetfulness, which may result in them neglecting standard self-care efforts.
• Social skills: Being unable to get a full night’s sleep may lead to increased irritability in children and adults, which may manifest in difficulties with friends and/or co-workers.
• Activity levels: Lack of adequate sleep may cause children and adults to be excessively sleepy during one part of the day and hyperactive during other parts of the day.
• Bed-wetting: Even children who are otherwise toilet trained may have bed-wetting issues if their sleep and wake schedules are constantly disrupted.
• Learning difficulties: When individuals do not sleep well enough, they may struggle to focus. When they struggle to focus, they may also struggle to learn, which may come with significant drops in grades at school or performance levels at work.
• Time-management issues: Difficulty focusing can and does often lead to an individual struggling to stay on task and complete assignments in a timely manner.

Additionally, when an individual does not get adequate rest at night, their irritability may manifest in ways that teachers, colleagues, parents, friends, and family may take as behavioral issues. For example, a person’s exhaustion-induced trouble focusing, disorganization, restlessness, fidgeting, impatience, or frequency of being off-task may be interpreted as intentional defiance.

Because others may be unaware that a person is struggling with the effects of sleep-disordered breathing, they may find fault in the individual himself/herself.

Fortunately, sleep-disordered breathing is treatable, as are the symptoms that frequently come with these disorders.

If you suspect that you or someone you love is suffering from a sleep-disordered breathing issue, we welcome you to give us a call to schedule an evaluation. By carefully examining our patients’ teeth, jaws, and airways, we can determine the best possible treatment approach.

Successful treatment not only improves the integrity of our patients’ airways, but also vastly improves their quality of life by correcting the symptoms that come with breathing disorders.