The "head banging" phenomenon affects 5% of young children and in extreme cases can cause physical damage
Research at the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine at the Technion offers a treatment for the "head banging" phenomenon of small children before going to sleep, a phenomenon that affects about 5% of children and in extreme cases can cause physical damage to the eyes or the brain. The study, conducted by medical student Tamar Etzioni, under the direction of Professor Giora Filler, was published last week in the scientific journal Journal of Pediatrics.
The periodic movements are expressed by hitting the head on the pillow, the mattress or the side of the bed, and sometimes also in monotonous movements of the whole body. The phenomenon usually begins around the age of one and usually lasts until the age of 4. In most cases it does not cause damage, and passes on its own, but sometimes the phenomenon may continue even into adulthood, causing damage to the eyes, and one case of death due to intracerebral bleeding following the movements was even described. Furthermore, in significant cases the children of school age are ashamed of their movements and as a result they are prevented from talking to friends or participating in trips with their friends, thus creating a secondary social damage.
The basis of these movements is unknown. The Technion researchers hypothesized that these are semi-voluntary movements that help the child to put himself to sleep, and therefore assumed that sleep deprivation in these children might reduce the phenomenon (as opposed to convulsions or other movement disorders that are usually aggravated after sleep deprivation). Therefore, the researchers gave the children a combined treatment of sleep deprivation and an aging drug.
Six children participated in the study. A week before he started, each child received a device that checks his sleep time. From this time, the researchers reduced one hour in the first week, in addition to treatment with an antiaging drug. In the second week, they stopped giving the medicine, and continued to save an hour of sleep. In the third week, they returned the "lost hour" to the child, ten minutes every day. At the end of the process, the children went back to sleep as before, without sleep deprivation and without medication.
"The combination of sleep deprivation and medicine almost completely eliminated the phenomenon," says Tamar Etzioni. "The child's time to fall asleep is shortened to five minutes. In the second week, the movements disappeared completely and they did not return in the third week."
At the end of a month and at the end of a year, retests were conducted. Only in one child did the movements return, in a moderate way. "The results are very encouraging, but we only did the research on six children and now we intend to expand it, using a sleep laboratory and video recordings," says Tamar Etzioni.
