Sleep is one of those things in life you take for granted and like anything else you’ve ever taken for granted in your life you don’t realize how much sleep means to you until you are the one suffering from one of the major sleep disorders. Some people think that not sleeping properly is like an inconvenience – one of those annoying things in life that just happens. Of course the same people probably have never had to deal with serious sleeping disorders which can throw their life into chaos and affect everything from their working and personal relationships to their health.
So why do people wind up suffering from sleep disorders? Sleeping is part of the natural rhythm of life and there’s even a name for this – the circadian rhythm. We’ve evolved to adapt to a 24-hour pattern of night and day and when anything happens to us emotionally, psychologically or even physically it can throw this rhythm out completely. For example look at what happens to people who travel on long haul flights to different time zones. They wind up with that wonderful travel accessory jetlag which takes anything from a few days to a week to adjust to. This is a typical example of what happens when your circadian rhythm is put out of balance.
What are the main sleep disorders that you can suffer from?
Sleep Disorders – Insomnia
The one that most people are familiar with is insomnia or the basic inability to either fall asleep or stay asleep each night. There are two types of insomnia: transitory/temporary or chronic/permanent. A lot of people will go through a phase in their lives where they simply can’t sleep properly for a few nights in a row and that’s pretty normal. It could be an emotional stress or work related problem that’s keeping you awake at night and once you deal with the problem your insomnia will disappear too.
It’s when the insomnia persists and you’re unable to sleep properly for weeks on end that it becomes a health issue and you’ll need to get medical advice to help solve your sleeping problem. There are two ways of dealing with insomnia. In the short term you can use sleeping pills to help you fall asleep and/or stay asleep each night. This is a very temporary measure simply because you’ll build up a tolerance to these pills pretty quickly so realistically you can only use them for 2 or 3 weeks at most.
The best and only long term way of dealing with insomnia is finding the actual cause of it in the first place. Treating the symptoms of insomnia is only part of the process and it’s only through making behavioral changes or even using cognitive behavioral therapy that you can hope to see real changes in how well you sleep each night. Part of changing behavior is establishing a rock solid sleep routine and having proper sleep hygiene. One example of this is to make sure your bed and bedroom are used for sleep and sex and nothing else. No computers, no iPads, no televisions and media players – basically nothing that can stimulate your mind at a time during your day that you should be winding down and relaxing.
Sleep Disorders – Sleepwalking
Another very common sleeping disorder that people don’t often discuss is somnambulism or what’s more commonly known as sleepwalking. Even though the person is technically asleep their sleeping pattern is still being disturbed and a person who suffers from this can wind up feeling exhausted the next day but not being sure why. If you find a partner or loved one sleep walking then handle them with extreme care and try to gently guide them back to bed. If the sleepwalking is persistent then you may need to lock doors and windows to make sure the person can’t get outside. You can treat somnambulism with sleeping pills containing benzodiazepine or a tricyclic antidepressant like the widely prescribed amitriptyline but again you need to get to the actual cause of the problem to stop it.
Sleep Disorders – Sleep Apnea
The most dangerous of the sleeping disorders that you can suffer from is something called sleep apnea. The word apnea itself means “to breathe” and during an attack of sleep apnea people can actually stop breathing in their sleep. The physiological cause of this is very similar to when people snore. When you’re lying in bed asleep the muscles in your body relax and so do the muscles in your throat. What happens next is that something called the soft palate in your mouth and your tongue begins to slide backwards into your throat. For some people this usually just means that the person is going to deafen you with snoring – which is the sound of air forcing the narrowed air passage in your throat to vibrate loudly.
For people with chronic sleep apnea this airway is either almost completely closed or actually closed off entirely which is called Obstructive Sleep Apnea or OSA for short. What happens next is that the lungs are filled with air but the body realizes that your blood oxygen level is dropping rapidly and it wakes you up for a split second so you can start breathing again. This is an automatic reflex on the part of your body and is the only thing that keeps people with undiagnosed sleep apnea from choking to death in their sleep but this can happen to a person dozens or hundreds of times each night so they’re constantly tired through a continuous lack of proper sleep.
To have your sleep apnea properly diagnosed you may need to attend a sleep lab and have your heart rate, brain waves, breathing and movement monitored and measured while you’re asleep. There are also ways of conducting these same tests at home and returning the results back to the sleep lab separately.
How can you spot sleep apnea? Well one of the first signs of this problem is chronic snoring or the type of snoring that actually keeps people in other rooms awake all night. Snoring now and again is something people do but if you have a chronic snorer in your family then it could be a sign of a sleep apnea problem. People who are throat snorers are more likely to suffer from this problem and the reason the snore through their throats instead of their nose is the same – the soft palate and tongue slide backwards into the throat and create a narrow passage for air to pass through. The narrower the passage the louder the snoring tends to be.
Once you’ve been diagnosed with sleep apnea, and especially OSA, your doctor will usually recommend that you use a CPAP machine. This is a piece of medical equipment that regulates your breathing during the night so that your soft palate or tongue never get a chance to cause an obstruction. It does this by maintaining a continuous flow of positive air into your body through a small face mask and that’s what CPAP stands for – Continuous Positive Airway Pressure. It might seem a bit drastic to have a machine help you breathe properly each night but the other option is chronic sleep apnea which can be fatal in extreme cases.
Sleep Disorders – Restless Leg Syndrome
One of the more odd sleeping disorders is something called Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS). Even though this particular condition is more of a neurological problem it can and does cause problems with sleeping patterns. Why? Because people with RLS will wake up with a crawling or itching feeling on their legs and the only way they can make it stop is to get up and walk around for a short while. Then they can go back to sleep but there’s no guarantee that you won’t suffer from another bout of RLS during the night.
Sleeping disorders and breaks in your sleeping pattern can also cause other problems to appear like teeth grinding and even bed wetting in adults. These then need to be diagnosed and treated separately from the actual sleep disorders themselves. This then adds more stress for the sufferer and the additional stress causes more insomnia so it becomes a vicious circle that you have to work hard with your doctor to break out of.
How to treat your sleeping disorders?
So how can you go about treating your sleeping disorders? Well that all depends on what particular sleeping problem you have. When you look at most people who have trouble sleeping and you examine the issue closely you’ll find that job or personal stress (or both) are causing their minds to remain hyperactive at night. Once your mind is actively working over a problem or a personal upset the body simply won’t want or be able to sleep until you become exhausted and just pass out. Doing this for one or two nights is one thing but doing it every night for weeks will be very detrimental for your health and severe sleep deprivation can actually cause mild forms of psychosis.
So to really address the main sleep disorders you need to understand what in your day-to-day life is actually causing them. That’s where the behavioral changes become important.
For example if you drink several cups of coffee each day and find you have trouble sleeping that night then this isn’t a physiological problem it’s a lifestyle problem and cutting down on your caffeine intake will cure it. The same applies to having a proper sleep hygiene routine in that if you’re surrounded by activity and stress right up the point where you actually get into your bed to sleep you’re more likely than not to have difficulty getting asleep at night. Your lifestyle and life choices play a big part in causing sleep disorders and it’s only when you change these can you expect your sleeping pattern to get back to normal.
Relaxation before you sleep is critical to falling asleep and staying asleep, so why not try taking a warm bath or maybe even meditating or praying before you go to sleep. At least that way your mind is empty of other thoughts and worries and this will give you the best possible chance of getting a good nights sleep for once.
Click here for my recommended site for sleep disorders products!