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A sleep study is ordered by a physician when it is thought that a sleep disorder may be affecting their patient’s health. Sleep disorders involve any difficulties related to sleeping, including difficulty falling or staying asleep, falling asleep at inappropriate times, excessive total sleep time, or abnormal behaviors associated with sleep. A number of sleep disorders can have a profound effect on our well-being, such as:
• Problems staying awake (excessive daytime sleepiness)
• Narcolepsy
• Sleep disordered breathing
• Problems maintaining a regular sleep/wake cycle
• Problems with sleep-disruptive behaviors (sleep walking, night terrors, bed wetting)
• Problems with falling or staying asleep including insomnias.
• Problems with a persons “sleep architecture” or pattern of sleep.
Getting good sleep can have a tremendous impact upon your health. You should wake up feeling refreshed and alert, and you should generally not feel sleepy during the day. If this is not the case it is very important to consider that you may have an unrecognized sleep disorder. It may surprise you to learn that chronic sleep deprivation, regardless of its cause, significantly affects your health, performance, and safety.
According to the National Commission on Sleep Disorders Research, chronic sleep disorders affect approximately 40 million people in the United States; however an overwhelming majority of sleep disorders remain undiagnosed and untreated. Sleep disorders can cause excessive daytime sleepiness, lead to a decreased quality of life, and impose a medical risk to patients, thereby resulting in increased expenditure of health care dollars. Sleep deprivation and sleep disorders are estimated to cost Americans $100 billion annually in lost productivity, medical expenses, sick leave, and property and environmental damage.
There are a number of causes of sleep deprivation. The stress of daily living may make it difficult for us to sleep well, or perhaps, like many Americans, we willingly trade sleep for more work or play time. After a typical night’s sleep, you may not wake feeling restored and refreshed and be sleepy during the course of the day, and still not be aware that you are sleep-deprived or have a sleep disorder. You might think, “it’s just stress,” or you might “always feel this way” and not realize that you should feel differently. This lack of awareness compounds the problems, because so many people remain undiagnosed for years.
Decreased alertness and excessive daytime sleepiness impair your memory and your cognitive ability - your ability to think and to process information. Disruption of a bed partner’s sleep due to a sleep disorder may cause significant problems for the relationship (for example, separate bedrooms, conflicts, moodiness, etc.). Sleep deprivation induces significant reductions in performance and alertness. Reducing your nighttime sleep by as little as one and a half hours for just one night could result in a reduction of daytime alertness by as much as a third.
It is crucial to understand the extent and prevalence of these disorders; more than 80 sleep disorders are recognized by the American Sleep Disorders Association, affecting more than 70 million Americans. Most cases, unfortunately, go undiagnosed and untreated.
The good news for many of the disorders that cause sleep deprivation is that after risk assessment, education and treatment, memory and cognitive deficits improve, health risks are lessened, and the number of injuries decreases. You’ve already taken the first step in talking with your primary care physician, but it is important for you to follow through on the course of treatment and diagnosis they prescribe in order to achieve the best result: healthy restful sleep.
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