How to deal with night sweats in children

The so-called night sweats are the phenomenon of sweating while sleeping at night. Children are more likely to sweat while sleeping at night because their metabolism is very active. Generally speaking, it is normal for children to sweat at night and it is a physiological reaction. However, it should be noted that some children may have autonomic nervous system disorders and sweat more when sleeping at night. This is pathological night sweats and you need to be vigilant.

Some children often sweat while sleeping, and the sweat soaks their clothes and pillowcases. This phenomenon is called night sweats in traditional Chinese medicine. Many parents are worried about this and seek medical treatment everywhere, but to little effect. In fact, night sweats in children are not necessarily pathological. Most of them are physiological. Because children's skin contains more moisture, has abundant capillaries, has an active metabolism, and their autonomic nervous system regulation function is not yet fully developed, they are prone to sweating when they are active. If children are too active before going to bed, it can increase the body's heat production, or shortly after eating, gastrointestinal motility increases, gastric juice secretion increases, and sweat gland secretion also increases accordingly. These can cause children to sweat more after sleeping, especially within 2 hours after sweating.

Once children are found to have night sweats, the first thing to do is to find out the cause in time and give appropriate treatment. Drug treatment is generally not recommended for physiological night sweats. Instead, it is recommended to adjust lifestyle and eliminate fever-causing factors in life. For example, children's activities should be appropriately restricted before going to bed, especially strenuous activities; they should not eat too much before going to bed, and should not be given large amounts of hot food or hot drinks before going to bed; the bedroom temperature should not be too high when sleeping, and children should not wear thick clothes to sleep; the amount of quilts should be increased or decreased as the temperature changes.

Some children start sweating profusely after they fall asleep at night. At this time, the blood calcium level in the body is often low, which causes the body's sympathetic nerve excitement to increase abnormally and the sweat gland threshold to drop, causing profuse sweating. At this time, you should pay attention to calcium supplementation for your child. It should also be noted that some people may think that children sweating at night have rickets, but this understanding is actually wrong.