Tag Archives: Sleep disorder

Straight, No Chaser: Narcolepsy – The Sleep Attack

Sleep, , , , , , , , ,

narcolepsy

This is part of a series on sleep disorders.

  • Click here and click here for discussions about insomnia.
  • Click here for a discussion of night terrors.
  • Click here for a discussion of hypersomnia (excessive sleepiness).
  • Check back for a discussion of sleep apnea.

When you hear about narcolepsy, it’s usually in the context of some joke, but it’s a horrifying condition. Looking at the lead picture, imagining blacking out while driving a car.  A diagnosis of narcolepsy should prompt certain lifestyle changes.

To better understand this condition, let’s look at certain truths of narcolepsy.

Narcolepsy doesn’t happen just because you’re tired.

Narcolepsy is a brain disorder. The part of your brain that regulates your cycle of being awake vs. being asleep is disturbed. The drop attack is not fading into sleep. It is an irresistible shut down. Now, narcoleptics do suffer from severe sleepiness throughout the day, but the sleep attacks aren’t predictable based on how tired one is.

Narcoleptics have severe disruptions of the activities of daily living.

Just remembering that this is a drop attack will help you appreciate the danger of narcolepsy. It can occur at any time during any activity. The unpredictability of the condition renders it very dangerous to the sufferer, and it makes performing at work, at school, in social and in many other settings very difficult.

Narcoleptics are likely suffering from other sleep disorders.

Understand that narcolepsy is a disruption of the sleep/wake cycle. That disturbance can manifest in other ways, including poor sleep quality and frequent nighttime waking. However, narcoleptics do not tend to spend more total time asleep during the day than unaffected individuals.

In addition to the sleep attacks, the main symptoms are excessive daytime sleepiness and cataplexy.

Cataplexy is a sudden voluntary muscle loss while one is still awake—the horror before the horror, if you will. Individuals feel limp and/or unable to move. Other symptoms may include hallucinations and an extension of the cataplexy to outright paralysis before and after the episode. Now the drop attacks themselves typically last seconds to minutes and result in a temporary feeling of refreshment before the sleepiness phenomenon reoccurs.

There’s no special rhyme or reason to who suffers from narcolepsy.

Narcolepsy occurs the world around and in men and women at a roughly equal rate. It typically occurs in children through young adulthood, but it can occur at any age. Surprisingly, it often is underdiagnosed. Don’t let that happen to you. With any form of a blackout or sleep attack, please get evaluated and be sure to ask if the episode could have been narcolepsy.

Check back for a discussion of causes, diagnosis and treatment of narcolepsy.

Thanks for liking and following Straight, No Chaser! This public service provides a sample of what http://www.SterlingMedicalAdvice.com (SMA) offers. Please share our page with your friends on WordPress. We are also on Facebook at SterlingMedicalAdvice.com and Twitter at @asksterlingmd.

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Straight, No Chaser: Why Are You So Sleepy?

Sleep, , , , , , , , ,

hyperinsomnia

This is part of a series on sleep disorders.

  • Click here and click here for discussions about insomnia.
  • Click here for a discussion of night terrors.
  • Check back for discussions of narcolepsy and sleep apnea.

Are you one of those individuals who is always tired and sleepy? You take iron, you exercise and you’re getting sleep at night. However, you’re still tired? What’s that about?
Hypersomnia (i.e., excessive sleepiness) is characterized by prolonged nighttime sleep and/or recurrent bouts of excessive daytime sleepiness or prolonged nighttime sleep. This is not the variety of sleepiness due to physical or mental exhaustion or insufficient sleep at night.  Hypersomnia makes you want to nap repeatedly during the day. Ironically, even if you do take a nap or even after you sleep overnight, you’re still fatigued.
The functional importance of this is somewhat obvious. Hypersomnia interrupts your life, your work, your ability to normally interact with others. Symptoms are what you might expect from someone not getting enough sleep. Here’s a typical list:

  • restlessness
  • anxiety and irritation
  • decreased energy
  • slow thinking
  • slow speech
  • loss of appetite
  • hallucinations
  • memory difficulty
  • loss the ability to function in family, social, occupational, or other settings

Hypersomnia is difficult. It takes time to realize you’re affected beyond just regular fatigue. It’s also difficult to pin down the cause. Consider the following potential groups of causes:

  • Physical causes may include damage to the brain (e.g., from head trauma) or spinal cord, or from a tumor.
  • Medical and mental/behavioral health causes may include obesity, seizure disorder (epilepsy), encephalitis, multiple sclerosis and other sleep disorders (e.g., sleep apnea, nacolepsy).
  • Mental/behavioral health causes may include depression, drug or alcohol use.
  • Medications or medication withdrawal may cause hypersomnia.

Unfortunately, treatment is symptomatic and often requires some degree of trial and error. For some individuals, stimulants, antidepressants and other psychoactive medications are effective. For others, behavioral changes appear to be more effective.
Any disruption in the quality or amount of sleep warrant investigation. Discuss your concerns with your physician if you have the opportunity. You always have the option of discussing with your SterlingMedicalAdvice.com expert consultant.
Thanks for liking and following Straight, No Chaser! This public service provides a sample of what http://www.SterlingMedicalAdvice.com (SMA) offers. Please share our page with your friends on WordPress. We are also on Facebook at SterlingMedicalAdvice.com and Twitter at @asksterlingmd.

Copyright © 2013 · Sterling Initiatives, LLC · Powered by WordPress

Straight, No Chaser: Your Rebuttals and Questions about Insomnia

Medical Treatment, Sleep, Health Prevention, , , , , , , , , , ,

You are certainly an entertaining group behind the scenes. Here are some of your questions on insomnia. Be reminded that should you want to leave me a private question, just go to the Home Page, or type https://jeffreysterlingmd.com into your browser. Here’s five questions from this morning’s post on insomnia.
1. Aw, hell! You’re telling me I can be dying from something causing insomnia?

  • It’s way more likely that level of stress you’re displaying is keeping you awake at night.

2. How is it that sex makes you sleepy?

  • When you do exert yourself vigorously, the greater utilization of muscles will deplete glycogen (energy) stores and make you drowsy. Also, it’s well established that certain hormones (e.g. prolactin, GABA and oxytocin) that promote sleep are released after an orgasm.

3. You mentioned tea. A good cup of tea at bedtime helps me sleep.

  • If that works for you, go for it. Some people have paradoxical effects to stimulants (In fact, stimulants are the most common treatment for ADHD – a topic for another day.)

4. What about giving my baby Benadryl?
I’m giving information here, not practicing medicine, so that’s a question for your physician. I will say there are many drugs (most notably those in the anticholingeric class) that have drowsiness as a side effect, and many emergency departments will give Benadryl to adults for that purpose. That said, these medications are not primarily used for drowsiness, and you’ll have to deal with other drug effects (such as the intended purpose for the medication) in addition to any possible drowsiness that occurs.
5. Sex at night keeps me wide awake.
That’s why a lot of you are shy about putting comments in the inbox… Sorry, but the answer to that question was not meant for public consumption.
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Straight, No Chaser: Insomnia – You are Not Getting Sleepy…

Medical Treatment, Sleep, Health Prevention, , , , , , , ,

insomniahypnosis

Talking about insomnia makes me well, tired. You know what the problem is. You either can’t fall asleep, or you can’t stay asleep. You’re tired when you wake and all throughout the day. Lack of sleep saps your energy and your productivity.
Insomnia really isn’t very cool to deal with, either as a person or as a physician. Patients are frustrated and sometimes cranky from being tired, or they can be extremely nervous and stressed, which will perpetuate a vicious cycle. There are so many mental factors that can disrupt your ability to sleep.
Medical professionals tend to think of insomnia in two forms for purposes of evaluation. Either the insomnia is the main problem (primary insomnia), or it’s secondary to another condition (secondary insomnia) such as reflux, uncontrolled asthma, arthritis or other pain syndromes. It could be due to medications, depression or just stress. It could be due to some undiagnosed condition, such as cancer, an enlarged prostate (making you have to get up to urinate throughout the night), thyroid disease or sleep apnea. Then there’s the caffeine (coffee/tea), nicotine (cigarettes) and drunk scene (alcohol).
The thing is, whether acute, intermittent or chronic, any insomnia really is an inconvenience and can even be incapacitating. Before you subject yourself to a million dollar medical workup, just remember, if it’s secondary insomnia, and you know (for example) that your pain is keeping you awake, try dealing with the primary issue. Alternatively, if it’s primary insomnia, there are a lot of things you might consider trying. In fact, consider this my Top Ten Tips, presented in the order you might consider implementing them.

  • Good diet and exercise habits make your body perform as they should and will clean up a lot of potential problems that will affect sleep.
  • Avoid naps during the day. You want to be good, tired and ready to sleep when night comes.
  • Develop the habit of only using your bed for sleep or sex. That conditions your body to be ready to sleep when confronted with the stimulus of your bed.
  • Get your snoring partner some help if s/he is part of what keeps you awake. Check here for tips to deal with snoring.
  • Try not to eat for several (3-4) hours before you sleep. Nothing says ‘no sleep’ like heartburn all night (By the way, this is the real reason you shouldn’t eat after a certain hour – not concerns about your weight.).
  • Similarly, avoid nighttime stimulants (e.g. cigarettes, coffee, tea and exercise close to the time you want to sleep, if this proves to be a problem).
  • Although alcohol is a sedative, it’s also on the don’t-do list because it can cause restless sleep and interrupt the sleep cycle.
  • Find a way to relax before sleep. Consider a bath, sex, a book or soothing music. Or all of them.
  • Set the alarm for the morning, then hide your clock. You don’t need to have a clock to remind you that you aren’t sleeping all night.
  • Use ‘white noise’ for background if you’re bothered by other sounds.

Here’s a bonus tip: If you fell asleep during the reading of this post, keep it for future reference.
As Edward R. Murrow used to say (well before I was born): Good night, and good luck.
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Straight, No Chaser: Quick Tips – You Snore Too Much

Sleep, Health Prevention, Neurology, , , , , , ,

snoring
You snore too much.  What this means is your breathing is intermittently partially obstructed while you’re sleeping.  Snoring is the sound of air moving past that obstruction.  Whether serious or not, first you should know it’s common, occurring in about 50% of adults.    It could be serious or just positional.  Here are some Quick Tips for you.

  • Sleep on your side.  This should remove the tongue as a cause of a partial obstruction.
  • Avoid sedatives if possible.  Sedatives cause significant enough relaxation to the tissues in your throat to cause that partial obstruction.
  • Limit alcohol before sleeping (by about two hours).  Alcohol is a sedative.
  • Elevate the head of your bed or prop your head up by about 4-6 inches.  This should manually move partially obstructing tissue out of the way.
  • Fix what ails your nose.  If you have chronic problems with nasal obstruction or a deviated nasal septum, you’re more inclined to breathe through your mouth.  This will increase the chances that you snore.  Similarly, those nasal strips you may have seen work (when they do) by increase the area in the nose through which they can breathe.
  • Finally, losing weight (if you have it to lose) works by reducing the tissues in and around your throat that cause snoring.

It’s time to see your physician if you find yourself awakening from sleep choking, gasping or otherwise short of breath.  This could be an indicator of a serious condition, including sleep apnea.  Additionally, you may want to seek care if your sleeping causes functional problems (e.g. you or your partner have difficulty sleeping as a result of your snoring).
This is a significant enough issue that I will revisit it in the future.  In the meantime, sleep well.

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