5 sleep problems you need to work with your doctor

As you know, a per­son spends a third of his life in a dream, and the qual­i­ty of his life dur­ing the wak­ing peri­od depends on how ful­ly he rests. How­ev­er, not every­one and not always sleep pro­ceeds safe­ly, pro­vid­ing its most impor­tant func­tion — the rest of the body. If a per­son after wak­ing up feels tired, over­whelmed and sleepy, then this should be a rea­son to see a doc­tor. When do you need spe­cial­ist help?

Snoring in sleep

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, cas­es of going to the doc­tor about your own snor­ing are extreme­ly rare. Most often, rel­a­tives are con­cerned about the prob­lem, forced to lis­ten to ser­e­nades instead of ful­ly rest­ing. But even in such a sit­u­a­tion, they do not imme­di­ate­ly turn to a spe­cial­ist, but when the prob­lem becomes life-threat­en­ing. The thing is that snor­ing can be a sign of a dan­ger­ous con­di­tion — sleep apnea. In this case, there is a delay in breath­ing for more than 10 sec­onds, which is fraught with the most seri­ous con­se­quences, up to death. It’s good when there are rel­a­tives near­by who can notice a lack of breath­ing and wake a per­son up in time, but if he lives alone, then you can sus­pect some­thing is wrong by chron­ic fatigue, increased pres­sure and heart rate in the morn­ing.

There­fore, do not ignore snor­ing and so under­es­ti­mate the pos­si­ble neg­a­tive con­se­quences of such a con­di­tion. Today there are many ways to cor­rect it, and one of the most effec­tive is CPAP ther­a­py, which involves the use of a spe­cial mask dur­ing sleep. It helps to straight­en the soft tis­sues of the laryn­gophar­ynx and elim­i­nate snor­ing, and with it, res­pi­ra­to­ry arrest.

Grinding teeth

This phe­nom­e­non is called brux­ism. It is believed that this is the lot of only small chil­dren who are teething, but the caus­es of night grind­ing, champ­ing and swal­low­ing sali­va are much more exten­sive. Most often this is a prob­lem for neu­rol­o­gists and ortho­don­tists. Any dis­rup­tion in the work of the cen­tral and periph­er­al ner­vous sys­tem can lead to neu­ro­log­i­cal and motor dis­or­ders. Stress, emo­tion­al over­load, overex­er­tion are fraught with invol­un­tary mus­cle con­trac­tions and teeth grind­ing. Recent­ly, experts have increas­ing­ly noticed that brux­ism is accom­pa­nied by sleep dis­or­ders, in par­tic­u­lar, sleep apnea. This is a kind of reac­tion of the body to the ces­sa­tion of breath­ing, allow­ing it to be resumed.

Be that as it may, you should care­ful­ly lis­ten to your­self and pay atten­tion to such signs as a feel­ing of weak­ness and fatigue in the morn­ing, pain in the head and jaws. A con­sul­ta­tion with a den­tist will con­firm the guess­es, because with chron­ic brux­ism, tooth enam­el suf­fers sig­nif­i­cant­ly.

Cramps at night — a reason to see a doctor

If a per­son is famil­iar with this phe­nom­e­non, but encoun­ters it only occa­sion­al­ly, then there is no rea­son for con­cern. Most like­ly, the whole thing is over­work, the cause of which can be a long walk or hard phys­i­cal labor. Anoth­er thing is if the mus­cles of the low­er leg, foot or thigh are often reduced, dis­rupt­ing sleep, and with it the qual­i­ty of life. Most often, con­vul­sions are the result of a dis­ease, but only a doc­tor — phle­bol­o­gist, neu­rol­o­gist or ortho­pe­dist can make an accu­rate diag­no­sis. One of the com­mon caus­es of night cramps is a meta­bol­ic dis­or­der asso­ci­at­ed with a neg­a­tive change in the lev­el of cal­ci­um or iron in the body. In this case, it is enough to adjust the diet and start tak­ing a vit­a­min-min­er­al com­plex to solve the prob­lem.

How­ev­er, there are more seri­ous ail­ments that are respon­si­ble for sud­den invol­un­tary mus­cle con­trac­tions. We are talk­ing about dis­eases of the thy­roid gland, in par­tic­u­lar, hypothy­roidism, as well as throm­bophlebitis, osteo­chon­dro­sis, dia­betes mel­li­tus, etc. There­fore, you should not delay con­tact­ing a doc­tor if the sit­u­a­tion is repeat­ed more and more often.

Insomnia

Most often, insom­nia is under­stood as the inabil­i­ty to fall asleep, but this dis­or­der com­bines sev­er­al dis­or­ders at once. At the same time, the dura­tion of sleep is not of deci­sive impor­tance, since this thresh­old is dif­fer­ent for each per­son, but get­ting up too ear­ly, fre­quent awak­en­ings dur­ing the night, a feel­ing of super­fi­cial sleep observed over a long peri­od of time indi­cate insom­nia. Often, patients are in no hur­ry to seek help from a spe­cial­ist at an ear­ly stage, pre­fer­ring to solve the prob­lem on their own. Some­one brews herbal prepa­ra­tions, drinks over-the-counter seda­tives, and some­one seeks solace in alco­hol, espe­cial­ly since after drink­ing it, a deep sleep real­ly sets in.

How­ev­er, a per­son does not imme­di­ate­ly notice that it is alco­holic bev­er­ages that cause fre­quent awak­en­ing, and it will be very bad if he begins to solve the prob­lem by repeat­ed drink­ing. There­fore, at the first signs of sleep dis­tur­bance, it is rec­om­mend­ed to con­sult a doc­tor, because if insom­nia is caused by stress, then valer­ian alone will not help the cause, spe­cial med­ica­tions are need­ed that can cope with the con­se­quences of neu­ropsy­chic stress. In addi­tion, rest­less legs syn­drome, which occurs in 15% of the pop­u­la­tion and is one of the main caus­es of poor sleep, can pro­voke insom­nia.

Man walks in his sleep

Sleep­walk­ers often cause ridicule and become the tar­get of jokes, but the suf­fer­ers of som­nam­bu­lism them­selves are often not laugh­ing. Dur­ing sleep, such peo­ple can per­form activ­i­ties that are char­ac­ter­is­tic of a wak­ing per­son — cook food, dri­ve a car and walk the streets. It is good if a per­son does not live alone and there is some­one who can wake him up or, with­out dis­turb­ing his sleep, return him to bed. Oth­er­wise, he will have to take care of him­self on his own, but first you need to get accu­rate infor­ma­tion about his night­ly adven­tures, and such a diag­nos­tic method as polysomnog­ra­phy can help with this.

Most often, chil­dren suf­fer from som­nam­bu­lism. One rea­son for this behav­ior is the imma­tu­ri­ty of the ner­vous sys­tem. If, how­ev­er, an unhealthy sit­u­a­tion is observed in the fam­i­ly, when the child is sub­ject­ed to tyran­ny, vio­lence, psy­cho­log­i­cal pres­sure, which can pro­voke men­tal dis­or­ders, the help of a doc­tor is need­ed, but first these pro­vok­ing fac­tors must be exclud­ed. In adults, sleep­walk­ing can be asso­ci­at­ed with tak­ing cer­tain med­ica­tions, ner­vous excite­ment and fatigue, as well as some dis­eases, includ­ing the already men­tioned rest­less legs syn­drome, Parkin­son’s dis­ease, etc.

In all of the above cas­es, you need a doc­tor, so do not delay with a con­sul­ta­tion with a spe­cial­ist, even if it seems that some of them, such as snor­ing, are not some­thing seri­ous. The con­se­quences can be much more seri­ous, so every­thing must be done to estab­lish a healthy, full sleep.