"If I Could Bottle That Energy..."

I don't know if any of you had grandparents that would say "If I had could bottle your energy, I'd sell it and make a million dollars," as you were tearing around their house with your cousins when you were little, but it was a common refrain in my family. I noticed that they would say it less and less as I got older, and a study in The Journal of Pediatrics may point to why.
Eiholzer et al published a paper to be released in the November issue examining the metabolism and energy expenditure of young boys who play ice hockey. The boys were compared to their teenage hockey playing counterparts in areas like daily energy expenditure, sleep, spontaneous physical activity, and amount of energy they spent training. It turns out that the activity level (specifically the spontaneous physical activity level, like taking off running in the parking lot or beating up your brother, I suppose) of young boys doesn't seem to suffer one bit if they get less sleep. This is completely different than what the researchers found with the teenagers and from what previous studies on overtraining and sleep deficiency have found with adults. It actually seems to defy the principles of physics and common sense. How can you keep up that level of maddening 8 year-old craziness if you don't get enough sleep?
In their conclusion Eiholzer and colleagues offer a possible theory why. The write that the findings suggest an important point- "child-specific control of physical activity" may be the answer. Now I have to admit I don't exactly know what "child-specific control" means, so I Googled for it. No luck, except the article's abstract was returned to me in three search results. So, I've gone to the source, Dr. Eiholzer himself, and asked the following:
(by "child-specific control")... Does this mean that the level of control is related to the age group somehow, or that the prepubescent boys have more choice in their physical activities and therefore perform more of them? Does this suggest that parents who control their children's activity levels rather than allowing the children to choose them hamper the effect somehow? Furthermore, are the controls of sporting activity by the coaches any more or less regimented in this club? How should a coach of young athletes use this information to increase or decrease the amount of practice time or activity level (or spontaneous activites) within practice to the best effect?
The one question I probably should have asked... "How do you bottle that stuff?"
Reference:
Eiholzer U, Meinhardt U, Rousson V, Petròa R, Schlumpfa M, Fusch G, Fusch C, Gasser T, Gutzwiller F (2008). "Association between Short Sleeping Hours and Physical Activity in Boys Playing Ice Hockey." The Journal of Pediatrics 153 (5) pp 640-645.

Pediatric Neurology recently published a study on children who grind their teeth while they sleep. Teeth grinding, or bruxism, is linked to a variety of disorders but is commonly thought of as an outlet for stress. Research written by Vendrame et al conclude that children diagnosed with migraine headaches also suffer from sleep disturbances. In my opinion, though, this wasn't the most important finding in their paper. In the course of discussing this phenomena, the authors highlight an important issue: Children suffer from tension headaches.
Often this is an ignored arena for parents. A lot of adults in this "shake it off" society seem to think that just because kids are small, (or don't have jobs, financial concerns, etc.) they don't have stress. Hey, between school shootings, instantaneous gossip via IM/text, the public humiliation readily available on Youtube (the #1 search result for "embarrasing" probably hadn't gone to her first prom yet), and parental pressure to perform academically/athletically/socially, I think there's plenty out there for a kid to get stressed out about. In addition to stress, tension headaches have been associated with risk factors such as high caffeine intake and anxiety, all of which can be found running rampant through the halls of most middle schools and high schools (Ohayon 2001). It shouldn’t be surprising then that the bodies of half of those children experiencing tension headaches are finding the only outlet for overactivity they can manage- their engines are still revving when they're supposed to be sleeping, and hence they're grinding their teeth at night.
References:
Ohayon, MM., Li, KK., Guilleminault, C. (2001). Risk Factors for Sleep Bruxism in the General Population. Chest. (119) pp 53-61.

Vendrame, M., Kaleyias, J., Valencia, I., Legido, A., Kothare, S.V. (2008). "Polysomnographic Findings in Children With Headaches." Pediatric Neurology. 39 (1) pp. 6-11.

Adverse Effects of SMT in Children

A recent issue of The Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics contained an article from a chiropractic teaching clinic which looked back at its records for problems associated with adjusting children. Adjusting kids is a big issue within the profession of chiropractic; probably next to the stroke issue, there is none more controversial. That statement needs to be put into context though. The controversy isn't within the profession, but rather outside of it; hence, there is a growing body of research examining both topics to hopefully inject some hard science into what chiropractors as a profession have been saying for 100 years: Chiropractic is safe and effective, even for children.
The study by Miller and Banfield examined 781 files of children under 3 years of age who were treated at a British chiropractic college. The authors found a rate of adverse reaction to be one per 100 pediatric patients, or 1 every 749 treatments (keeping in mind that most patients are treated multiple times), none of which lasted longer than 24 hours or required hospital care. It should be mentioned here that the side effect rate for headaches alone is 18 of 100 for Singular and 14 of 100 for Concerta, two of the most commonly prescribed drugs for children in the US.
This article supports the evidence that chiropractic care is both safe and effective (85% of parents reporting improvement) for children under 3 years of age. An interesting note: A 3 year-old would be considered “old” for the majority of the patients adjusted in this review; almost ¾ of the patients were 3 months old or younger.
Reference:
Miller, JE, Benfield, K. (2008) "Adverse Effects of Spinal Manipulative Therapy in Children Younger Than 3 Years: A Retrospective Study in a Chiropractic Teaching Clinic." Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics, 31 (6) pp. 419-23.