Sleep Disorder
Sleep Disorder: Not Getting A Good Night’s Sleep?
Is your Sleep Disorderly?
If you have been sleeping poorly for some time, you may have tried a natural sleep remedy such as a glass of warm milk at bedtime, lavender in your pillow slip or a hop cushion. Your Sleep Disorder may have prompted you to try non-prescription sleeping pills containing an anti-histamine such as doxylamine succinate, or a herbal combination containing, for example, valeriana officianalis. But have you asked your family doctor for advice? If you feel you may have a sleep disorder, you should talk to a health professional.
What your doctor can do for you
Your doctor will help establish whether you are suffering from insomnia or some other disorder. For example, if you get off to sleep easily enough but still feel tired the next day, that may point to a sleep disorder. If you snore loudly, so may that. If you wake up suddenly struggling for breath, that may point to a sleep disorder. If you yawn a lot during the day or if you want to sleep during the afternoon, you may be suffering from the well-known disorder, sleep apnea.
To establish what is happening your doctor may refer you to a sleep clinic or sleep laboratory or sleep center to take part in a sleep study (by means of polysomnography, which simply means multiple readings are recorded while you sleep), in order to ascertain the nature of your particular sleep disorder.
A night in a strange bed
A sleep study may take place in a public or private hospital, a hotel, or a designated medical facility. Alternatively, you may be offered portable equipment to be used at home, after brief instruction as to how to attach the sensors. In the case of a sleep study outside the home, a sleep technican is in attendance throughout. You will arrive in the early evening, change into your sleeping gear and get ‘wired up’. The technician will place a number of sensors on your chest, stomach, arms, legs, head. He or she will record EEG and EKG readings, and movements of your eyes, chin, chest and limbs. You will get into bed. It may seem impossible to sleep with all these sensors attached, but it is not. You almost certainly will fall asleep and lots of data relevant to your sleep disorder will be logged. Be warned that if you are in the habit of waking in the night to visit the bathroom, you will have to summon the technician to disconnect you temporarily, and reconnect you later. Nevertheless, your sleep metrics will be collected and interpreted by a specialist medical practitioner, who will report to you and your doctor about any possible sleep disorder from which you may be suffering.
Diagnosis
Among other things, you may be diagnosed as having sleep apnea about which you can find more information at our page, sleep apnea.
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