Sleep Disorders in Children

THe following transcript is an introduction to our radio program in the summer of 2007 and we also focused on sleep disorders in children:

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Dr. Michael Schiesser: Good morning. This is Health Dimensions on Seattle's Progressive Talk AM 1090. Welcome to Health Dimensions. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Schiesser.

I'm an internal medicine specialist, and I'm the medical director for the Creekside Sleep Medicine Center in Bellevue. I'm here with my co-host, Dr. Amy Lazar, who practices adult psychiatry and also specializes in child and adolescent psychiatry.

We're going to bring you experts from around the country as well as the Puget Sound region, to address problems and the latest scientific advances for these problems, around sleep. This month we're really excited to bring you all sorts of topics in sleep that some of you may be familiar with.

Hopefully we're going to give you lots of new information or things that, you're driving around, or you're waking up, or you're going to sleep, and all of a sudden what's going to go through your mind is, "Wow, I heard that thing on the radio, and that was like, it really made me think differently about my sleep"

Or "why I can't sleep, or it just made so much sense that if I put the cat out at night I might actually be able to function better at work, " or things like that.

So that's maybe a little bit too simplistic, because there are a lot more sanctioned sleep disorders that we can discuss on this program--and actually, we're going to bring you guests from around the world, as I said, and well, at least the United States, anyways, to talk about what we know about sleep as of 2007, and what we can do about sleep.

This is both in terms of medications, but approaches that are beyond medications. I'm an internal medicine specialist, and it turns out that one of my biggest tools is my prescription pad.

But that doesn't mean that when somebody walks out of my office, or somebody walks out of the office of the folks that I refer to in the community, like Dr. Amy Lazar, who is my co-host today--say hello, Amy.

Dr. Amy Lazar: Good morning everyone, and welcome to our first show. We're very excited.

Dr. Schiesser: Or--yeah, sorry Amy--or Dr. Terry Jacobs, who is a sleep specialist who works with me at Creekside Sleep Medicine Center in Bellevue, or next week we're going to hear from Dr. Jan Zamplenyi, who is an ear, nose and throat specialist in Bellevue, or Dr. Steve Carstensen, who is a dentist in Bellevue.

A lot of folks that we're going to be talking with have approaches to sleep problems that do not necessarily limit themselves to medications, or maybe primarily not, not even have anything to do with medication.

Today we're going to be focusing largely on insomnia for the first half of the program, and the second half of the program we're going to focus on light therapy. In our insomnia discussions we're going to be talking with Dr. Leslie Lunt, who will be on the phone just shortly, here, calling in from Boise, Idaho.

Dan Adams is an expert in the use of light therapy for sleep problems, Seasonal Affective Disorder and otherwise, and he's going to be talking to us at the bottom of the hour on how light helps to regulate our day/night rhythms. This is a really interesting topic that has a lot of major implications on sleep.

So we're going to be talking about people who have problems getting to sleep, staying asleep, problems getting restful sleep, and sleep-related breathing problems, and if you want to call us here at the station to talk with us, I think that's going to be more at the bottom of the hour, but that's toll-free, it's 877-753-1090.

I think I'd like to just sort of kick off the conversation around sleep loss before we get Dr. Lunt on the phone. Amy, what kinds of thoughts do you have about insomnia that you wanted to discuss with our listeners?

Dr. Lazar: I think it's really important, since I come from a child and adolescent perspective in my area of expertise, to field some questions and bring up topics relating to sleep disorders in children and adolescents that are parallel with adults, yet we have very different treatment options.

Dr. Schiesser: Tell me a little bit more about the difference between--I guess, I mean, I really don't treat kids in my practice, other than some simple stuff that's more like what you might consider urgent care, but can you help me understand what kinds of problems a child might present with, or a parent might represent as far as the common sleep disorders that are specific to kids?

Dr. Lazar: Well, when you're looking at the adolescent population in particular, and I know a lot of parents can relate to this, they like to stay up at night--especially now, with the new technology age in computers--and IM through the evening, so they're usually going to bed at two or three in the morning after talking to their friends, and waking up at six o'clock for school and sleeping through the day.

Then the teachers recognize that this child or adolescent might have problems with attention, when really they haven't slept all night.

So we have a Catch-22, because attention deficit disorder in children and adolescents, and the stimulants that are used to treat it, can actually also cause insomnia.

Dr. Schiesser: So you're seeing a lot of sleep problems that are secondary to doctors prescribing stimulants.

Dr. Lazar: That is one common issue. Another common issue is that, in younger children, they often have trouble with night terrors. Also, depending on diet--since we're bringing in a holistic approach to things--children that eat a lot of sugar and caffeine at night, just like adults, aren't sleeping. They are running around the house when their parents are trying to get to bed and go to work in the morning, early.

Dr. Schiesser: I know that my wife's been concerned about TV. It's easy to fall into this habit, in the morning, of my daughter wants to get up and sort of watch Dora's Explorer or whatever--she's three years old--and my wife was expressing concern about how that habit could be harmful.

I started to do some research, and I saw that kids who watch a lot of TV at nighttime, it actually causes a lot of sleep impairment. So there's a lot of evidence that nighttime TV can really affect the restful sleep on the part of kids. I don't know if that's something that people recognize or they ignore, but certainly TV is a big issue for kids.

So I really think that, we're quite excited about all this, and I think that what I'd like to do is bring on Leslie Lunt. She is an adult psychiatrist, but also has training in adolescent psychiatry and addiction psychiatry.

Leslie Lunt has extensive media experience, including currently serving as a host for Clinician's Roundtable on XM Satellite Radio. It's a featured program, it's the first and only national radio program serving medical professionals. She has also published numerous clinical papers, and presently serves as an editor for Current Psychiatry.

The first of her two books in publication is "Think Like A Psychiatrist, " recently gone to press for its second edition.

Leslie, are you there?

Dr. Leslie Lunt: Hi!

Dr. Schiesser: Hi Leslie, it's great to have you on our show. I've been listening to you on XM Radio and it's an exciting show that you bring there for doctors, and I'm glad to have you on the phone this morning to talk about insomnia.

Dr. Lunt: Well I'm hoping you got a good night's sleep.

Dr. Schiesser: Well, I was sort of imagining that there was going to be this whole kind of backstage party here, with a throng of fans, and pulling up semis with bowling allies in the back, and George Soros, and Bono...

Dr. Lunt: That happens after the show, Mike.

Dr. Schiesser:... but yeah, maybe so. But anyway, it was a little more quiet than I guess I had expected; but how are you doing this morning?

Dr. Lunt: Oh, I'm great. I'm actually in beautiful Phoenix, Arizona, this morning.

Dr. Schiesser: Oh, cool. We're here, also, with child and adolescent specialist Amy Lazar, so we're going to have a roundtable this morning with your two co-hosts; but I think that maybe we can cue up the conversation for after the break--we're going to take a break in about 30 seconds--but do you have anything you want to say, quickly, about what you're going to be talking about this morning?

Dr. Lunt: We're going to talk about how well or not you slept last night.

Dr. Schiesser: Well that's a really relevant topic for everybody who's waking up this morning. So let's take that up after the break, and I appreciate you coming on the phone this morning. This is Health Dimensions on KPTK, Seattle's Progressive Talk, AM 1090, and we're going to take a break.