FAQs

A sleep disorder disrupts and disturbs your overall quality of life. It can affect a child, teen, adult, parent or senior citizen.

• Sleep apnea: A disorder that causes a cessation of breathing during sleep for intermittent periods. Each pause typically lasts 10-20 seconds or more, and can occur 20 to 30 times an hour. It can occur as often as several hundred times per night. Sleep apnea is often times easy to diagnose and very treatable.
• Insomnia: The inability to fall asleep or periods of wakefulness during the night, which afflicts up to 10 percent of the population. This includes difficulty falling asleep, difficulty staying asleep, waking up too early and/or poor quality of sleep.
• Parasomnia: This disorder includes a range of sleep events such as nightmares, sleepwalking, seizures, the acting out of strange behaviors while still asleep, or even violence. While parasomnia is a rare form of sleep disorder, it can cause extreme disruption to an individual's daily functioning and family life.
• Restless Legs Syndrome (RLS): This condition causes twitching or jerking of the legs during sleep, resulting in sleep disruption and fatigue during the day. It can be characterized by a strong, often uncontrollable urge to move your legs immediately before sleep, or other odd feelings like burning, prickling, itching or tingling.
• Periodic Limb Movement Disorder (PLMD): A disorder in which patients have repetitive, uncontrollable and often imperceptive muscle spasms during non-REM sleep.
• Narcolepsy: An irresistible need to sleep no matter how much sleep you get, which can manifest in "sleep attacks" while talking, driving, or working or falling asleep at unusual times and in awkward places.
• Parasomnias: A category of undesirable physical or verbal behaviors during sleep, such as sleepwalking, bed-wetting, teeth grinding, frequent nightmares, night terrors, nocturnal seizures or sleep paralysis.

Yes – some of the common risk factors for sleep disorders include:

• Age: While sleep problems affect all ages, they’re more common in middle and older-age adults. Children have different sleep patterns, resulting in unique pediatric sleep problems.
• Gender: Women are more likely to suffer from insomnia; men are more likely to have sleep apnea.
• Weight: The more you weigh, the more likely you are to develop a sleep disorder.
• Anatomy: Some people have structural abnormalities in the sinuses, mouth, throat or elsewhere in the upper airway.
• Drug or alcohol use: Medications, alcohol or illegal drugs can interfere with normal sleep patterns or the ability to awaken from sleep.
• Other medical problems: People who suffer from high blood pressure or depression are also at higher risk.

Almost everyone experiences difficulty with sleep at some time. Problems can range from snoring to insomnia and can be related to times of stress or anxiety. Although there are many different sleep disorders, they all tend to share varying degrees of up to three very recognizable symptoms, including excessive daytime sleepiness, difficulty initiating or maintaining sleep or non-refreshing sleep, and unwanted behaviors that may occur during sleep (parasomnias).

While you sleep, your body is able to recharge. Your muscles get repaired and tissues regenerate. Hormones get released to help with growth, strength and development. Your memories get consolidated to help you process information faster and to help you remember important things, and overall cognitive functions improve.

Some issues that can result from sleep deprivation include:

• Cardiovascular problems including high blood pressure, abnormal heart rhythm (arrhythmia), coronary heart disease, heart attack, heart failure, and stroke
• Higher probability of developing diabetes
• Daytime sleepiness and fatigue
• Cognitive impairment, memory loss and poor job performance
• Complications with surgeries and other medical procedures.
• Anxiety and depression
• Increased risk of obesity
• Lower sex drive/impotence
• Worsening kidney problems

It’s time to see a doctor specially trained in sleep disorders when you have had trouble sleeping for more than a month or if you are tired during the day for unknown reasons. If you have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, it is important to have the cause evaluated in a sleep lab. You and your primary care physician should not assume that you have “insomnia”. Recent studies show that a high percentage (30-50%) of people diagnosed with insomnia actually have another sleep disorder such as obstructive sleep apnea. Also, it is very important to have your nocturnal breathing pattern evaluated before starting

Doctors call it “sleep hygiene.” Many of us get into bad habits which affect our body’s “internal sleep clock” knocking it out of sync. Good habits and a good sleep environment are what allows us to get a “good sleep.”

GOOD ENVIRONMENT

• Make the bedroom comfortable – not too hot or too cold, a soothing neat appearance to the room may help.
• Eliminate irritating noises – by closing doors, readjusting the water softener’s timing, use of ear plugs, or by use of a pleasant background sound, [like ocean waves or birds chirping softly] to cover over the irritating noise.
• Reduce or eliminate light – even with your eyes closed, room light may affect your internal sleep clock.
• Correct any problem caused by your bed partner – movement, frequent getting up, snores, etc… may greatly affect your sleeping ability – possibly you could use two separate mattresses under one headboard, separate beds, or perhaps your partner has a sleeping disorder which needs to be corrected for the both of you.

GOOD HABITS

• Regular moderate exercise – exercising in the morning helps to reset your body’s internal clock
• Avoid late night meals – this is likely to cause a weight gain and the digestion of the meal is likely to either keep you awake or to cause “poor quality sleep.”
• Also avoid going to bed hungry – a light snack or a glass of milk may help. Avoid sugar or chocolate.
• Avoid caffeine for six hours before bed time – no coffee, tea [except herbal], most sodas or chocolate. Even if you can have caffeine and still fall asleep it causes a much lighter, poorer quality of sleep.
• Avoid alcohol and tobacco – alcohol if taken within three hours of bed time may cause you to relax but it also causes poor quality of sleep. Tobacco is a stimulant, which even if you do get to sleep will cause poor sleep quality.
• Lay down only when sleepy and sleep only in bed – get your body and mind trained to sleep when in bed.
• Don’t lay in bed awake – get up until sleepy. If something is worrying you, get up write it down for tomorrow and go back to bed.
• Get up at the same time everyday – establish a regular body’s sleep clock rhythm
• Don’t take naps – it confuses the body’s internal sleep clock. If you must, sleep in bed, not a chair or sofa and not for more than one hour.
• Use sleeping pills only if prescribed and only for a short time – pills can help during a short term problem, but they can cause a lot of problems if used for too long a period.
• Develop a pre-sleep routine – a quiet relaxing time before bed can signal your body that it is time to go to sleep.
• Don’t work at sleep – relax – hide your clock and just let sleep come. If you need to, get up for a while, until you feel sleepy. Although, you might be tired the next day, your body will get back into a normal rhythm as long as you do not nap.