Insomnia in childhood impacts sleep in adulthood

Children who don’t get good quality, restful sleep are likely to suffer insomnia in adulthood, says a recent study of the Pennsylvania State College of Medicine. Researchers followed over 500 children from childhood, adolescence through young adulthood. The sample respondents and their parents answered questions about sleeping patterns and overall quality of sleep. This first-of-its-kind longitudinal study concluded that 43 percent of those who suffered insomnia symptoms during childhood had persistent symptoms in young adulthood as well with 20 percent experiencing spikes in symptoms as adults.

“The key finding of this study is that insomnia symptoms in childhood are much more likely to persist over time than we previously believed. Those with insomnia symptoms and laboratory-measured short sleep duration are much more likely to evolve to develop a clinical condition in early adulthood, and not just to persist with the symptoms,” says Dr. Julio Fernandez-Mendoza, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral health, Pennsylvania State College of Medicine.

Lockdown didn’t impact infants’ language development

An international consortium of scholars from 13 countries recently released its findings on the impact of Covid-19 pandemic-related social isolation upon 2,200 infants aged between eight and 36 months. Their findings provide insights into the effects of lockdown on language acquisition in youngest children.

A study led by the University of Oslo and published in the journal Language Development Research has found that children who were read to more frequently during the lockdown were reported by caregivers to have learned more words, compared to their peers who were read to less frequently. A second study on the impact of increased screen-time on language development, led by the University of Göttingen and published in Scientific Reports, highlights that children with increased exposure to digital screens learned to say fewer words, compared to their peers with less screen time.

However, overall, the studies concluded that children learned more words than expected during lockdown, relative to pre-pandemic levels. “Relatively short isolation did not detrimentally impact language development in young children,” says Natalia Kartushina, associate professor, University of Oslo.

Green spaces reduce oxidative stress in children

A study of over 300 Italian children by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (IS Global) has found that increased exposure to green spaces reduces oxidative stress in children. Oxidative stress is defined as “a disturbance in the balance between the production of reactive oxygen species and anti-oxidant defences”. Symptoms include fatigue, memory loss, muscle and/or joint pain, decreased eyesight and headache.

The researchers found that exposure to green spaces also increased Vitamin D synthesis — vital to combat the ill effects of oxidative stress. “Increased exposure to green areas may contribute to children’s immune development by bringing them into contact with organisms that tend to colonise natural environments,” says lead author Judith Garcia-Aymerich, researcher and head of the Non-Communicable Diseases and Environment Programme at ISGlobal.

Positive parenting reduces children’s obesity risk

Children exposed to positive parenting are at reduced risk of obesity, reveals a study published in the journal Pediatrics (February 2022). According to the findings of the study, three key factors — “warmth, a positive and hospitable home environment, and responsiveness” — play a role in reducing the risk of childhood obesity. These factors enhanced children’s ability to self-regulate and shielded them from obesity despite their subjection to familial risks of maternal depression, poverty, residence in a single parent home or even obesity itself.

“A lot of the discussion around childhood obesity and other health risks focuses on identifying and studying exposure to risk. We took a strength-based approach in our analysis. We found that a supportive family and environment early in a child’s life may outweigh some of the cumulative risk factors that children can face,” says Brandi Rollins, author of the study and assistant professor of biobehavioral health, Pennsylvania State University.