Excessive Daytime Sleepiness – Causes and Treatments

Excessive daytime sleepiness can significantly affect the quality of one’s life. The Center for Sleep Medicine is finding solutions for those individuals suffering from excessive daytime sleepiness. 

Insomnia is a condition where an individual has difficulty falling or staying asleep.  Insomnia affects daytime functioning causing fatigue, depressed mood, impaired attention and concentration.  It worsens your ability to cope with stress, lessens enjoyment of social activities and quality of life.

“Acute” Insomnia is a temporary response to factors such as stress or jet lag and normal sleep returns on its own.  As a result your doctor may offer medication as an option for immediate relief.

Insomnia which persists for more than four weeks is referred to as “chronic insomnia”.  One in ten adult’s experiences chronic insomnia which can persist for months, years or even decades.

Causes and Treatments

 Many factors create and sustain insomnia.  All too often people are told to follow “good sleep hygiene” or prescribed medication.  While important they alone are not an effective treatment. Because sleep is a natural physiological process, long term medication use should be done with caution, as it may worsen sleep as patients develop tolerance over time.

A consultation with an insomnia specialist certified in behavioral sleep medicine will assess the psycho physiological, psycho-social, cognitive and behavioral factors that cause insomnia.

Another potential cause of daytime sleepiness is a Circadian Rhythm Disorder.  A person with this disorder may have difficulty sleeping at a time when they need to sleep, difficulty rising when they need to rise and difficulty maintaining alertness when they need to be awake.  Such a disorder can have a profound effect on daily functioning which may include work or school absenteeism, impaired work performance, impeded social schedules and stress on relationships and depression. 

For example, shift work may have a significant effect on individuals who frequently change work hours or who work at night.  In such cases work schedules are out of sync with the body’s internal sleep wake schedule.  Human beings were designed to be awake during the day and asleep at night not vice versa.  The good news is effective treatment for such a disorder is available at The Center for Sleep Medicine.