Sleep Medicine
What is Sleep Medicine?
Sleep medicine is specialized healthcare focused on diagnosing, treating, and managing sleep disorders. It includes conditions such as insomnia, sleep apnea, restless leg syndrome, narcolepsy, and parasomnias, which can significantly impact a person’s quality of life. Sleep physicians work to help individuals achieve restorative sleep and improve overall health.
Sleep Disorders
Excessive Daytime Somnolence
Excessive Daytime Somnolence, also known as Excessive Daytime Sleepiness (EDS) has several common causes. The major cause for EDS are sleep restriction, sleep apnea and Narcolepsy.
Sleep Debt
Getting seven to eight hours of sleep a night is important. Some people do not get a full night’s sleep because they choose to stay awake for longer hours, others are prevented from getting a full nights sleep due to work related restrictions or personal obligations. The effect of lost sleep accumulates; it does not dissipate. Therefore, we become progressively impaired and daytime hypersomnolence is one of the symptoms of sleep debt.
Sleep Apnea
There are three types of Sleep Apnea: obstructive, central and mixed. Obstructive Sleep Apnea is the most common type. It occurs when the soft tissue in the rear of the throat collapses and closes during sleep causing a blockage of the airway. Individuals with Sleep Apnea may stop breathing as many as several hundred times a night. These breathing interruptions cause a person to awaken for a brief time so that the body can resume normal breathing. Each apneic event causes a disruption in the normal sleeping pattern and leads to poor sleep quality. The most important complications due to an apneic event are; the drop of the oxygen level in the blood, stress on the heart and high blood pressure which can lead to heart attack if the arteries of the heart are already narrow, stroke, damage to the brain and congestive heart failure.
Insomnia
Symptoms of insomnia include difficulty initiating and maintaining a good night’s sleep with multiple awakenings, struggling to fall back to sleep, not being able to sleep as long as needed and not feeling refreshed after a night’s sleep.
Narcolepsy
Patients who suffer from Narcolepsy have an inability to regulate sleep/wake cycles normally. This leads to a neurological disorder. The patient will experience Excessive Daytime Sleepiness and may even uncontrollably fall asleep for periods of time throughout the day. Other symptoms include cataplexy (sudden loss of voluntary muscle tone), vivid hallucinations (occurring while falling asleep or waking) and sleep paralysis (occurring while falling asleep or waking).
Sleep/wake schedule disorder
This disorder causes Excessive Daytime Sleepiness and difficulty falling asleep and waking at normal hours. Patients experience a lack of synchrony between their natural sleep/wake schedule and the sleep/wake schedule of the cultural environment. Some common causes of this disorder are jet lag, shift work related sleep disorder, delayed phase or advance phase syndrome.
Parasomnia
This condition can be described as a group of undesirable physical phenomena that occur during sleep. Included in this group are confusional arousals, sleepwalking, night terrors, Hypnagogic Hallucinations, sleep paralysis, nocturnal seizures, REM behavior disorder, teeth grinding, Rhythmic- Movement Disorder and Restless Leg Syndrome. A patient will usually have a moment of partial arousal before, during or after an event of Parasomnia.
Restless Leg Syndrome
An individual with this condition will feel a creepy crawly sensation with funny feeling mostly in their legs and occasionally in their arms while at rest. They will have the urge to move their legs for relief. Most people will experience the symptoms of Restless Leg Syndrome more strongly in the evening hours causing their sleep to be disrupted.
Periodic Limb Movement Disorder
This disorder often occurs with other sleep disorders particularly Restless Leg Syndrome. An individual with Periodic Limb Movement Disorder will usually experience repetitive, involuntary movement of the limbs during the night. In some cases an episode of Periodic Limb Movement will cause arousal, which can lead to poor quality of sleep.