Sleep Apnea Linked to Childhood Stuttering
Adapted from ADVANCE for Speech-Language Pathologists & Audiologists. April 7, 2003
Nearly 4 percent of the US population has obstructive sleep apnea, which causes explosively loud snoring at night and extreme sleepiness during the day. People with the disorder experience a constant struggle to breathe while sleeping because the throat and mouth relax to such a degree that the airway collapses, causing them to waken to reestablish normal breathing. This cycle continually repeated during the night causes serious disturbances to sleep.
Patients with obstructive sleep apnea have gray matter loss in brain areas that regulate breathing and speech, scientists at UCLA have discovered. The tissue loss occurred primarily in regions of the brain that control speech production, movement and emotion. The amount of brain damage directly correlated to the severity of the patient’s disorder. They proposed that early damage to the brain’s speech centers triggers problems in the muscles that control the airway. Their findings suggest that sleep apnea is a preexisting condition--that abnormal wiring from childhood contributes to the onset of the disorder in adulthood. Nearly 40 percent of these patients also stuttered as a child, suggesting that the nighttime breathing disorder may arise from faulty brain wiring early in life (American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, Nov. 15, 2002).
It has been thought that sleep apnea is a result of narrowed airways caused by enlarged tonsils, a small jaw, or excess fat in the throat. More recent findings show that sleep apnea patients also suffer disordered wiring in brain regions that control muscles of the airway.
Patients with obstructive sleep apnea often show traits which may indicate subtle brain damage, including problems with memory, thought and motor skills. This may be caused by repeated loss of oxygen. This loss of oxygen places them at risk for high blood pressure, stroke and other heart-related ailments. The disorder is most common in men, elderly individuals, people who are obese, and children with large tonsils.