Among your New Year’s resolutions, you might have some goals for healthier eating, more frequent exercise, or improved money management. But have you set any goals for better sleeping?
Maybe you should. Quality sleep is tied to enhanced physical, mental and emotional health, and promotes the energy and mood you need to get through all the challenges of your day—all of which help you excel at those other resolutions.
For most of us, getting better sleep requires only an adjustment in our “sleep hygiene,” the habits that affect our ability to get to sleep and stay there. This means having a consistent bedtime and wake-up time, having a nightly routine that encourages you to wind down, and adjusting the temperature and lighting in your bedroom for optimal comfort.
But for some, it won’t be that simple. No matter how faithfully they adhere to good habits, some people will continue to have trouble falling asleep (or staying asleep), have difficulty staying awake during the day, or have persistent behaviors that disrupt their sleep.
Any of these could indicate a sleep disorder. There are more than 100 identified sleep disorders, but here are some of the most common:
Insomnia is familiar to most of us: work stress, jet lag, even hormones can make falling asleep (or staying there) a real challenge. But for some it’s a more persistent problem that requires medical intervention.
Sleep apnea is a common disorder in which a sleeping person stops breathing for some time. It may be mistaken for extreme snoring, as the gasping or choking caused when breathing re-starts can be quite noisy.
Narcolepsy causes you to feel overwhelmingly tired during the day, to the point where you experience “sleep attacks” a few minutes long. These might occur with or without cataplexy, a sudden loss of muscle tone that causes a person to dramatically fall or slump as they nod off.
Restless leg syndrome affects up to 10 percent of the U.S. population. It involves uncomfortable sensations in the legs, causing a powerful urge to move the legs while at rest. This makes falling asleep extremely difficult.
Parasomnias are a variety of unusual sleep behaviors that disrupt the ability to fall asleep, stay asleep, or get a good quality of sleep. Sleepwalking, bedwetting and night terrors are some of the more common parasomnias.
Because these disorders are so common, and have such a direct impact on our waking life, there is a growing focus on them in the medical field. Sleep medicine is a subspecialty that focuses on how to make our downtime more restful and restorative, and how to intervene if it’s not.
Shantanu Singh, M.D., is a pulmonologist who is trained in sleep medicine. He said his interest in this subspecialty came about when he observed ICU patients and the restless nights they often endured with beeping monitors and repeated visits from providers.
“There are so many interruptions while they are resting,” he said, “I always wondered if they got any real sleep and how that affected them. It made me want to learn more.”
Dr. Singh is the medical director of a new sleep center opening at Harnett Health in the spring. It will include a full-service sleep lab, where patients can get comfortable for overnight studies where their symptoms will be closely observed by staff.
“We’ll be able to do a lot of things that were only available at bigger hospitals,” he said. “Some people can’t easily get to other sleep centers, and now they’ll have one nearby.”
Dr. Singh said that without that kind of access to quality sleep care, some disorders can be misdiagnosed as depression or other issues with similar symptoms.
“Sleep-related symptoms are easily missed,” he said. “Even doctors don’t always have a good understanding of these things.”
As plans come together for the sleep center’s springtime opening, Dr. Singh is eager to introduce sleep medicine to the Harnett Health community.
“I’m really excited that we’ll be bringing this kind of care to the community,” he said, “where people can easily access it and get the help they need.”