Have You Maintained A Regular Bedtime/Waking Time?
Although we rarely identify it as a negative condition, many people actually get too much sleep. Most of these people often complain that they have not gotten enough sleep on any given night. For example college students have the habit of taking lots of caffeine to stay awake in order to finish that paper. Many times, they compensate for a lack of sleep at night by taking naps after (and sometimes during) their classes. This behavior might be recognized as “normal” by many teenagers and young people. However, many college-aged people suffer from sleep disorders. The most commonly recognized among these is insomnia, or the inability to obtain an adequate amount of sleep. But often overlooked and potentially harmful is hypersomnia.
Hypersomnia is defined as excessive daytime sleepiness and/or nighttime sleep. Humans sleep for an average of eight hours a night. Those with hypersomnia may find themselves sleeping for over ten hours at a time. The most common symptoms are napping at inappropriate times, difficulty waking up, anxiety, irritability, restlessness and fatigue. Some more serious symptoms may include hallucination, loss of appetite, memory loss, or the inability to hear, see, taste, or smell things accurately. The disorder can have a profound effect on one’s ability to cope in social situations. There is a range of possible causes for the condition, but the primary cause is described as abnormalities that occur during sleep or abnormalities of specific sleep functions.
Those with hypersomnia are generally diagnosed in one of four categories by a polysomnogram, which monitors a patient during one night of rest.
Post-traumatic Hypersomnia is caused by trauma to the central nervous system, such as a head injury or a traumatic accident. This kind of hypersomnia may last for a span of a few days or an entire lifetime following such an incident.
The symptoms of recurrent hypersomnia. These episode’s length varies. Dysfunctional hypothalamus causes recurrent hypersomnia.
Idiopathic Hypersomnia has no known cause and is the diagnosis most closely associated with the sleep disordernarcolepsy.
Normal Hypersomnia is seen in people who are commonly referred to as “long sleepers,” those who require more than ten hours of sleep per night as a result of genetic predisposition.
Hypersomnia shares some common symptoms with other sleep disorders: narcolepsy and sleep apnea. Patients suffering from narcollepsy get episodic “sleep attacks” regardless of their sleep at night. It resembles hypersomnia in the respect that many experience onset during teenage and young adult years. Sleep apnea is a condition which causes intermittent shortness of breath during sleep. It affects people of all ages but bears a resemblance to hypersomnia in that it is caused by an abnormality of respiratory function during sleep. Like normal hypersomnia, it also tends to run in families.
Lifestyle conditions may add to the habit of sleeping excessively. Hypersomnia may be a symptom of some medications or withdrawal. Extended sleep can be caused by intake of caffeine, alcohol and also drug abuse. It is estimated that approximately five percent of the population can be diagnosed with some form of hypersomnia.
However, the condition is greatly underreported because so many who have it do not realize that their excessive sleeping or napping behavior is abnormal. What is more, many do not realize what detrimental implications getting too much sleep can have for one’s life. Primarily, hypersomnia seriously interferes with a normal schedule. One might miss large amounts of work, school, or other important activities. Secondly, many of the side effects of hypersomnia such as decreased concentration, anxiety, and memory loss all contribute to a diminished work or academic performance. Treatments for those diagnosed for hypersomnia may include the prescription of stimulant or antidepressant medications. Also, it is advised to maintain a regular bedtime/waking time, and to avoid intake of alcohol and caffeine.
March 17, 2009
Facts About Sleep Help
Are you looking for help in sleeping? Perhaps this article can provide you with some helpful information.
A sleep disorder (somnipathy) is any disruption in the sleep patterns of an individual. While some sleep disorders may leave you feeling unrefreshed, a number of symptoms are more severe including excessive sleepiness, snor¬ing, difficulty falling asleep during normal sleeping hours and abnormal be¬haviors such as restless leg syndrome. There are even disorders that cause you to get too much sleep.
Sleep medicine has become a recognized medical subspecialty. Doctors who specialize in sleep medicine help people who are unable to sleep well. Sleep doctors are able to detect and treat both common as well as rare sleep troubles. Some common sleep disorders are insomnia, jet lag, sleepwalking, snoring and obstructive sleep apnea.
Insomnia is a sleep disorder characterized by chronic problems falling asleep, staying asleep or only sleeping for several hours and being wake unable to fall back to sleep. It is typically followed by functional impairment while awake.
It can be caused by another disorder, by changes in the sleep environment, by the timing of sleep, or by stress. Researchers do not know exactly why people need sleep, but we do know that lack of sleep can kill. Humans deprived of sleep for long periods begin hallucinating and develop other mental problems.
The best way to fall asleep is to have good sleep habits or to use natural sleep aids. These include reducing stress by using visualization or relaxation techniques, making lifestyle changes such as no-smoking, no caffeine, no daytime naps, or getting more light during the day. Other natural or best sleep aids are changing to a healthier diet and starting an exercise program. But, if after making these changes to try to reduce problems with sleep, and after visiting a doctor to make sure there are no medical reasons for the insomnia; then there are other sleep aids that a person can consider using.
There are several herbs that are known to be beneficial for people having sleeping problems. One common herbal sleep aid is Valerian which has been recognized for years in Europe as being helpful with insomnia. It is sold in the United States as a dietary supplement. There is no agreement on how this sleep aid works, but studies have shown that it does help with insomnia, as well as stress. There are side effects that as reported, so before taking this herbal aid, a person should discuss taking Valerian with a pharmacist, especially if they are taking any prescription medications. The root is the part that is used in herbal sleep aids, and side effects of headaches and night terror, have been reported. The oil of this root is reported to have the odor of cat urine, so the most popular way to take Valerian is as a pill, rather than a tea made from the liquid.
Melatonin is a sleep aid to help people fall asleep — especially people who suffer from the insomnia caused by shift work or jet lag. Melatonin is a hormone found naturally in the body when serotonin, another hormone, is exposed to decreased light at night. It has side effects and most of the literature recommends it not being used by people with depression, schizophrenia, autoimmune diseases, or other serious illness. Pregnant and nursing women and children should also not use melatonin.
Other common over-the-counter (OTC) sleep aids such as Sominex, or Nytol can also be tried by adults but, again, a person should discuss with a doctor before taking any of these sleep aids especially if the person suffers from and is being treated for depression, or other mental health problems as well as persons being treated for Parkinson’s disease. Most of the OTC sleep aids contain antihistamines which are known to cause some lingering side effects such as dry mouth, and excessive drowsiness.
The best way to fall asleep is naturally with correction of bad sleep habits. There are hundreds of natural sleep aids that can help you get your sleeping cycle reset.
Use Sleep Deprivation To Cure Depressed Patients
Sleep deprivation can actually help patients with some types of depression. A review article in a recent issue of Biological Psychiatry suggests that doctors may soon be using sleep deprivation therapy to treat depression as regularly as they did some 20 years ago.
In the 1970s, a depressed insomniac discovered that getting much less sleep than he wanted surprisingly improved his mood the next day. Doctors who treated depression began using sleep deprivation as a form of therapy. But sleep deprivation’s popularity was brief, and soon the evolution of highly effective antidepressant medications made it all but obsolete.
Now, however, doctors are reconsidering the often striking improvement sleep deprivation can make in a person with depression. “The remarkable transformation of often deeply depressed, psychotic, and suicidal patients in the course of a few hours into their normal … ’selves’ convinced many psychiatrists [in the 1970s] of the extraordinary importance of this phenomenon,” writes Anna Wirz-Justice, PhD. “Many studies followed, resulting in widespread [agreement] that sleep deprivation can have antidepressant effects. [However, it] also turned out that later sleep tends to reverse the improvement. [So the] original interest and investment in clinical research was gone.”
Wirz-Justice, of the Chronobiology and Sleep Laboratory at the Psychiatric University Clinic in Basel, Switzerland, notes that sleep deprivation was shown to be effective in more than half the patients treated and in many types of depression. And if one course of sleep deprivation treatment didn’t help relieve depressed patients’ symptoms, often a second course did.
Used alone, however, sleep deprivation’s effects were both temporary and unpredictable. Lacking a way to standardize sleep deprivation treatment, most doctors soon abandoned its use in depressed patients.
So why is sleep deprivation making a comeback now? Because use of newer antidepressant drugs together with sleep deprivation treatment is proving effective for helping to prevent return of depressive symptoms after sleep deprivation and for improving depressed patients’ response to their medication.
“Antidepressant medication has little influence on rates of response to sleep deprivation but may prevent relapse,” says Wirz-Justice. And “there is evidence … that … the addition of drugs may [help] the sleep deprivation effect.”
She also notes that there are studies showing that doctors can use sleep deprivation to improve depressed patients’ mood during the period of days or weeks required for antidepressant medication to become fully effective.
Ellen Leibenluft, MD, a mood disorders researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Md., agrees with Wirz-Justice that sleep deprivation has been underutilized. Leibenluft, who was not involved in the study, suggests that sleep deprivation might be particularly useful in depressed patients who aren’t helped by standard treatment methods and in patients — for example, severely depressed and suicidal patients — who need to have their mood lifted quickly. She adds that sleep deprivation’s use may also help expand doctors’ knowledge about what happens in depression and how antidepressant medications work.
Leibenluft stated on sleep deprivation and depression, “One important point in the article is the fact that research into the mechanism of circadian [24-hour body] rhythms and various cycles is really growing by leaps and bounds.The initial sleep deprivation research predated this recent explosion of the development of techniques to probe these systems. Now that we have the mechanism and tools to understand so much more about circadian rhythms and the sleep-wake cycle, we need to look closer at sleep deprivation and what it can tell us about depression.”
March 16, 2009
Discover Ways To Manage Insomnia By Remeron!
REMERONSolTab® has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of major depressive disorders in adults. Since major depression is also a cause of insomnia, then it can be deduced that REMERONSolTab® can also help with insomnia.
Remeron is a tetracyclic antidepressant. It affects chemicals in the brain that may become unbalanced and cause depression. It is thought to increase the activity of norepinephrine and serotonin which help elevate mood.
Before taking Remeron, inform your doctor if you have bipolar disorder, liver or kidney disease, seizures, heart disease, a history of heart attack or stroke, or a history of drug abuse or suicidal thoughts.
It may take up to several weeks of using this medicine before your symptoms improve. For best results, keep using the medication as directed. Talk with your doctor if your symptoms do not improve after 4 weeks of treatment. Avoid drinking alcohol. It can increase few of the side effects of Remeron. Remeron can cause side effects that may impair your thinking or reactions. Be careful if you drive or do anything that requires you to be awake and alert.
Get emergency medical help if you have any of these signs of an allergic reaction: skin rash or hives; difficulty breathing; swelling of your face, lips, tongue, or throat.
Call your doctor at once if you have any new or worsening symptoms such as: mood or behavior changes, anxiety, panic attacks, trouble sleeping, or if you feel impulsive, irritable, agitated, hostile, aggressive, restless, hyperactive (mentally or physically), more depressed, or have thoughts about suicide or hurting yourself.
Call your doctor at once if you have any of these serious side effects:
• fever, chills, body aches, flu symptoms;
• white patches or sores inside your mouth or on your lips; or
• Feeling like you might pass out.
Cold or allergy medicine, narcotic pain medicine, sleeping pills, muscle relaxers, and medicine for seizures, depression or anxiety can add to sleepiness caused by Remeron. Tell your doctor if you need to use any of these other medicines while you are taking Remeron.
There may be other drugs that can interact with Remeron. Tell your doctor about all your prescription and over-the-counter medications, vitamins, minerals, herbal products, and drugs prescribed by other doctors. Do not start a new medication without telling your doctor.
Reference: Drugs.com
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