Don’t let a good night’s sleep elude you

Sleep is a foun­da­tion of fit­ness, but peo­ple often over­look its value, espe­cially in com­par­i­son to diet and exercise.

We need ade­quate sleep to main­tain healthy func­tion­ing. Sleep rests and reju­ve­nates body and mind. It is essen­tial for our phys­i­cal and emo­tional well-being.

Stud­ies have shown that sleep reg­u­lates mood, enhances learn­ing and pre­serves mem­ory. It staves off acci­dents caused by day­time drowsi­ness, and low­ers the risk of stress-related con­di­tions, includ­ing car­dio­vas­cu­lar disease.

Chances are good that you are not get­ting enough sleep; we rec­om­mend seven to eight hours a night. About 60 per­cent of Amer­i­cans report prob­lems sleep­ing a few nights a week or more, accord­ing to sur­veys by the National Sleep Foundation.

If a good night’s sleep is elud­ing you, if you feel tired or lethar­gic dur­ing the day, con­sult your pri­mary care doc­tor. He or she may want to refer you to a spe­cial­ist with train­ing in sleep med­i­cine and sleep disorders.

About 70 mil­lion Amer­i­cans have some type of sleep dis­or­der. The good news is that most sleep trou­bles are treatable.

In some cases, they can be resolved with bet­ter sleep habits: keep­ing a reg­u­lar sleep sched­ule, get­ting reg­u­lar exer­cise, avoid­ing stim­u­lants (caf­feine, alco­hol, nico­tine), cre­at­ing a com­fort­able sleep envi­ron­ment, and keep­ing a rou­tine for wind­ing down at night.

In other cases, a thor­ough assess­ment of your sleep prob­lems may be obtained through a sleep study. Some sleep-related med­ical con­di­tions can only be detected dur­ing sleep. A sleep study allows us to observe and record brain waves, breath­ing, mus­cle activ­ity and other events dur­ing sleep to make a diagnosis.

These stud­ies typ­i­cally are con­ducted in a sleep lab­o­ra­tory with com­fort­able rooms — sim­i­lar to hotel rooms — that have reg­u­lar beds and basic ameni­ties to make sleep­ing there feel as nat­ural as possible.

Although there are about 80 dif­fer­ent types of sleep dis­or­ders, these are the most common:

• Insom­nia: Dif­fi­culty falling or stay­ing asleep is the most com­mon sleep dis­or­der. It can have many causes, includ­ing stress, anx­i­ety, depres­sion, med­ica­tions, stim­u­lants (caf­feine, alco­hol) and cer­tain med­ical con­di­tions. Treat­ment addresses the root cause, deter­mined through a vari­ety of assess­ment tools. Behav­ioral changes are a front-line treat­ment; med­ica­tions can be help­ful in select cases.
• Sleep apnea: About 16 mil­lion Amer­i­cans suf­fer from inter­rupted breath­ing dur­ing sleep. Peo­ple may stop breath­ing hun­dreds of times a night, which not only makes them tired dur­ing the day, but leads to other health risks such as heart attack and stroke. Sleep apnea occurs when the throat mus­cles inter­mit­tently relax dur­ing sleep and block the air­way. Treat­ment typ­i­cally involves devices to keep the air­way open or sur­gi­cal pro­ce­dures to change the struc­ture of the nose, mouth and throat.
• Nar­colepsy: This is a dis­or­der char­ac­ter­ized by sud­den onset of sleep dur­ing the day, regard­less of cir­cum­stances. We don’t know the cause and we don’t have a cure, but we often can suc­cess­fully man­age symp­toms with med­ica­tions and lifestyle changes.
• Rest­less legs syn­drome: An extremely uncom­fort­able feel­ing in your legs — tin­gling, crawl­ing, cramp­ing etc. — while at rest or lying down often dis­rupts sleep. Med­ica­tions and sim­ple lifestyle changes can alle­vi­ate symptoms.

Ohio­Health Sleep Ser­vices at the Delaware Health Cen­ter is among sev­eral Ohio­Health sleep cen­ter loca­tions in cen­tral Ohio. All are accred­ited by the Amer­i­can Acad­emy of Sleep Med­i­cine and offer patient suites, com­fort­able beds, reclin­ers, cable TV and pri­vate showers.

Dr. James Fulop is a board cer­ti­fied in neu­rol­ogy and sleep med­i­cine and serves as cor­po­rate med­ical direc­tor of Ohio­Health Sleep Ser­vices. He is also a mem­ber of the Grady Memo­r­ial Hos­pi­tal med­ical staff.

Posted by Grady Memorial Hospital on Mar 21 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.