Sleep disorder is a condition that disrupts the normal sleep cycle and the person’s ability to get restorative rest. It may affect your ability to take a complete and deep sleep. If you are suffering from restless nights, then you are not alone. As per a study, approximately 61% of people sleep less than 7 hours a night. This shows that people are so stressed and busy with work that they have forgotten the essential benefits of deep sleep.
Suffering from sleep deprivation mostly results in having sleep disorders. People might not take it seriously, but a lack of sleep impacts the overall quality of life. It affects not only your work but also your mental health, which requires ample rest.
Therefore, you need to fix your sleep, as various sleeping disorder treatments can help you get out of the cycle of restless nights. However, it is essential to know the symptoms, causes, and treatment of sleep disorders to improve the quality of your life. So, let’s untangle them.
Types of Sleep Disorders
You might have heard only about sleep disorders, such as insomnia, but there are over 80 sleep disorders. Here are the most common sleep disorders list-
- Insomnia: Insomnia is among the common sleep disorders in which it’s difficult for a person to fall or stay asleep. Mainly, it is caused by stress, anxiety, jet lag, hormonal imbalance, and digestion issues.
- Sleep apnea: This is a disorder in which your breathing repeatedly stops and starts. It mostly leads to snoring, causing the body to receive less oxygen.
- Restless legs syndrome (RLS): RLS drives a tingling sensation in your legs and propels you to move them. While the RLS is mainly linked with specific medical diseases like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and Parkinson’s disease, the precise reason is not always known.
- Parasomnia: It is a type of sleep disorder that triggers unusual movements and behaviours while sleeping. It often covers sleepwalking, sleep talking, nightmares, groaning, teeth grinding, and bedwetting.
- Narcolepsy: Narcolepsy refers to the “sleep attacks” that happen when you are awake. It is out of your control when you fall asleep and stay awake. It usually occurs due to muscle weakness.
- Hypersomnia: The condition of hypersomnia is when you are sleepy throughout the day, and you are likely to fall asleep suddenly without any sign of sleep.
Causes of Sleep Disorder
Generally, your body has a natural 24-hour sleep and wake cycle called circadian rhythm. You are active during your waking hours and get tired once the clock strikes for bed at night.
When this sleep cycle gets disturbed, the sleep disorder blows up the quality of your life. What causes sleep is unknown; however, some factors can be the reason for this disruption. The most common causes of sleep problems are-
- Anxiety or depression: Anxiety and depression may create mental stress, which further disrupts your sleep and sometimes makes you overthink.
- Medication side effects: In some cases, side effects of medicine may create problems for you and disrupt your sleep cycle.
- Medical Conditions: Medical conditions such as nerve conditions, Asthma, heart problems, and lung disease may also create discomfort due to which you might not be able to sleep better.
- Genetic factors: Some people may get sleep disorders due to their genes. Many people suffer from insomnia due to their genes.
- Night shift work: Having a bad work schedule impacts your routine, which may create a hindrance in your sleep schedule.
- Caffeine or alcohol before bedtime: Alcohol or caffeine may create problems in sleeping well. Therefore, one should resist them before bedtime.
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Sleep Disorder Symptoms
The symptoms you experience vary depending on the type of sleep disorder. Here are some of the sleep disorder symptoms you may have at night.
- It takes you more than 30 minutes to doze off, or you have difficulty falling asleep at night.
- You are having trouble getting a consistent flow of sleep, and you wake up at midnight and fall asleep again. It becomes a tough nut for you to crack.
- Unable to move right after waking up.
- While sleeping, you experience snoring, choking, or gasping.
- Urge to move arms and legs when sleeping.
- Sleepwalking or sleep-eating
- You frequently take naps during the daytime while carrying out daily chores.
- Brain fog – difficulty staying focused or paying attention to tasks at hand.
- Managing your emotions is not a no-brainer as your mood swings change. Irritability and crankiness happen.
- You get a sudden outbreak of muscle weakness when you are angry, laughing, or scared.
- Lack of vitality or motivation
These are the symptoms of sleep disorders that one needs to look out for. If you’re facing such issues, then make sure that you choose suitable treatments.
Risk Factors for Sleep Disorder
Certain people are at higher risk of developing sleep disorders. Some of these Sleep disorder risk factors include:
- Smoking, use of caffeine or alcohol
- Irregular sleep schedule
- Low physical activity
- Obesity
- Older age
- Overnight work shift
- Family history of sleep disorder
- Using a screen before bedtime.
Sleep Disorders Treatment
After you are diagnosed with a type of sleep disorder, you have a list of options to treat this condition. From therapies to medication and prevention, sleeping disorder treatments help a lot to improve the quality of your sleep cycle;
1. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is a purposeful talk therapy to foster relaxation and tweak behavior revolving around sleep. It treats insomnia through the process followed by psychologists. The strategies that follow are relaxation therapy, stimulus control therapy, sleep restriction therapy, and sleep hygiene therapy.
2. Breathing Devices
Another sleeping disorder, sleep apnea treatment, is treated by wearing a breathing device like a CPAP device. Meanwhile, CPAP puts pressure in the upper air passage to keep your breathing stable and discontinue your snoring. Furthermore, oral devices such as mandibular advancement or MAD help you breathe while sleeping.
3. Medications
If you face a severe sleep disorder, then your healthcare professional prescribes you medication to recover.
- Sleep-inducing medication for insomnia includes melatonin, zaleplon, eszopiclone, ramelteon, doxepin, zolpidem, lemborexant, or suvorexant.
- Medication for Restless legs syndrome covers pregabalin, gabapentin, enacarbil
- Wake-up stimulating medications for Narcolepsy are solriamfetol, armodafinil, pitolisant, sodium oxybate, and modafinil.
Natural Remedies
Natural remedies, such as medicines based on Ayurvedic principles and therapies, help you to relax your mind and get better sleep. Some of the natural ways are-:
- Using Ayurvedic medicines, such as Aadved Sleep, helps to manage your sleep disorders and reduces stress and anxiety to give you better sleep. It helps you to wake up feeling refreshed and warm.
- Doing Abhyanga may also help to calm your mind and reduce stress levels. Pouring oil on your scalp and massaging it for a while may help you to soothe the mind. Using Bhringraj oil, Adivasi hair oil, or til oil may help you relax your mind and manage your stress.
- Other therapies, such as Shirodhara and yoga poses such as the Fish pose and the child pose, may also help promote good sleep.
How Are Sleep Disorders Diagnosed?
It’s essential to understand your root cause; your healthcare provider examines your symptoms and health condition. They may do diagnostic tests to evaluate your condition.
- Sleep diary: When you visit your healthcare professional, you may be asked to keep a sleep diary to record your sleeping habits. You will track down your sleep basics: when you fall asleep, go to bed, wake up every day, and how you feel before and after sleep. You can write down your sleep or wear a smartwatch or actigraph device to record your sleep cycle activity.
- Questionnaires: You will be asked multiple questions about your sleep to determine the type and cause of your sleep disorder.
- Sleep studies: Polysomnography is a sleep study disorder test used to trace the brain’s actions and breathing during sleep.
How to Prevent Sleep Disorders
Healthy lifestyle habits can assist you in managing your sleep and reducing symptoms.
- Take 7-8 hours of healthy sleep at night.
- Stay away from the screen 2 hours before your bedtime.
- Meditate and do yoga to relax your mind and better sleep.
- Do physical activity during the day and avoid strenuous exercises before bedtime
- Follow the same time of sleep and wake up
- Don’t eat heavy meals at night.
- Set a calm, quiet, dark bedroom environment–use a sleep mask if the light disturbs you.
- Drink herbal teas like chamomile to induce sleep at night.
Conclusion
Sleep disorders impact the quality of life and overall well-being. At that point, you have a crystal clear understanding of the types, causes, symptoms, and treatment of sleeping disorders and in which category you fall. Modifying your lifestyle habits and using therapies will help you improve your sleep cycle.
Regardless of that, it’s crucial to consult a healthcare professional to diagnose and treat your sleep disorder types. Sleep is everything for good health, and sleep disorders lead you toward chronic diseases. So it’s essential to fix your sleep before it gets you in big trouble.
Citations
- Howell, M.J. Parasomnias: An Updated Review. Neurotherapeutics 9, 753–775 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13311-012-0143-8
- Kornum, B., Knudsen, S., Ollila, H. et al. Narcolepsy. Nat Rev Dis Primers 3, 16100 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrdp.2016.100
- Ekbom, K. and Ulfberg, J. (2009), Restless legs syndrome. Journal of Internal Medicine, 266: 419-431. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2796.2009.02159.x
