Insomnia in children has increased in recent years. Before resorting to sleep induction supplements as miraculous, parents should seek medical advice.
As children have more and more insomniassaid this Thursday the Portuguese Sleep Association (APS). And the drugs are not the solution.
Pediatrician Marta Rios warns that, before resorting to sleep induction supplements as if they were miraculous, parents must take children to the doctor.
“First -line treatment is sleep hygiene and behavioral strategies. [A insónia nas crianças] You should not treat with drugs. The drugs, when given, are given as second line. They are supportive of behavioral therapy, ”he said in an interview with Lusa.
Safeguarding that in Portugal “there are no scientific and objectified work” about insomnia in children, this sleep specialist-who is part of the North Maternal-Infantile Sleep Pediatric Pathology Consultation team of the Santo António Local Health Unit (Ulssa), in Porto-has been assisted at one Increased number of orders.
But… there are no enough doctors
The APS management doctor acknowledged that the system cannot respond to this increase in the number of children with insomnia.
“In the last two, three, four years, requests have surely doubled and almost tripled. We are few to consult And it is not an appointment that exists in many places. I end up receiving patients from everywhere, from health centers and other hospitals, ”he said.
They resort to this service of Cmin patients with autistic, syndromatic, child with neurological diseases, but also “increasingly” parents of children with development considered typical.
“This is a volume of patients of pediatric age that has behavioral insomnia (…) are those children who fall asleep to their parents or milk (…) and throughout the night they are waking up or who have resistance to sleep,” he describes.
On the eve of World Sleep Day that is marked Friday, Marta Rios says that first it is necessary to realize that insomnia is, by definition, a difficulty in starting or keeping sleep given the conditions for this.
What is sleep hygiene?
“The first measure to do is to give children conditions to be able to sleep well and these conditions have to do with routinesos scheduleone Comfortable, quiet and safe placepreventive measures that should be assured to the head and before supplements or medicines, ”he says.
Asked about the use of food supplements with melatonin, the so -called sleep hormone, the pediatrician is perennial: “It’s no use giving melatonin waiting for a miracle because The miracle is not”.
He adds: “The only studies that exist, and have shown the effectiveness and safety of melatonin use in the treatment of insomnia, are with children over two years old with neurodes -development disturbances.”
In children with typical development without other comorbidities, Marta Rios only defends the use of this supplement – which in Portugal sells without a prescription and already exists in various formats from drops to gums – with the unique purpose of helping to institute behavioral strategies.
“E Always, always, on medical recommendation”He stresses.
Remembering that “falling asleep well is not to fall asleep fast It is falling asleep at the right place at the right time, ”Marta Rios believes that“ if she is falling to the exaggeration of giving meaningless melatonin ”, warning that“ the dose, the time, the goal is very important ”.
“It should be used transiently (…). Parents have the melatonin crutch and do not make the strategies they should do, ”he laments.
