7 Facts About Sleep Disorders

1. What are some ways to help me sleep better?

It is most important to go to bed at the same time and wake up at a fixed time. In particular, wake up immediately when you wake up in the morning. Wake up and shine a bright light to help you wake up.

It is also a good idea to exercise regularly during the day. It is recommended to take a walk from 30 minutes to an hour, mainly during sunny hours. You should also avoid too intense exercise right before bedtime, because the exercise itself is a stimulus, making it difficult to fall asleep.

Avoid caffeinated beverages such as coffee, tea, green tea, and cola and chocolate.

Avoid naps. If you take a nap, you won’t sleep well at night.

Don’t overeat in the evening. Overeating itself is a stimulus, making it difficult to fall asleep. Eating a glass of milk or cheese before going to bed can help you fall asleep.

No smoking after 7pm. Smoking makes you emotionally excited and hard to fall asleep.

Do not use the bed for any purpose other than sleeping. For example, you shouldn’t do anything else, such as watching a book on the bed or watching television.

Do not drink alcohol because it prevents you from getting a good night’s sleep and often wakes you up while you sleep.

If you can’t sleep after 10 minutes of lying in bed, wake up and go to another place to read or listen to the radio and do relatively little irritation. When you fall asleep, go to bed again.

When you go to bed or when you wake up in the middle of the night, avoid looking at the watch. When you look at the watch, you become worried about not being able to sleep, and when you are worried, you will be nervous and sleep more. Therefore, after lying down to fall asleep, it is advisable to remove the watch from view.

2. What is not good about taking sleeping pills?

The hope for all insomniacs is to sleep well without taking medication. Many patients fear that if they continue to take sleeping pills, they will become addicted and dementia.

It has been published in the paper that two researchers familiar with sleeping pills argued for and against sleeping pills.

First of all, researchers who oppose the use of sleeping pills, insomnia is not treated with sleeping pills, and sleeping pills may lower cognitive function, and older people are at higher risk of falling due to muscle relaxation when taking sleeping pills. Insist.

Meanwhile, researchers in favor of sleeping pills report little or no sleeping reliance in most patients. The researchers also claim that recent sleeping pills can be used safely for long periods of time with little or no residual effect, memory effects, and muscle relaxation effects.

Most people’s perceptions of psychiatric drugs, especially sleeping pills, are about benzodiazepine-based sleeping pills that have been in use since the 1950s. It was also true that medications at that time had a long stay in the body when administered, and remained in the body until the day after the next day, so that the head was not clear and there were physical or psychological withdrawal symptoms that were difficult to stop easily.

However, these days sleeping pills have a short-term action and have little effect on cognitive function. Also, depending on the characteristics of the patient’s sleep disorder, there are medicines that are effective for people who have difficulty falling asleep, and some medicines that are effective for people who sleep well but are difficult to wake up in the middle. In recent years, unlike traditional sleeping pills, sleep drugs made of melatonin, a hormone involved in sleep that is produced by the pineal gland of our brain, have been developed and used.

It is not advisable to use sleeping pills for ‘only awakening treatment’. However, there are times when it is necessary to properly use non-benzodiazepine-based hypnotics that act intermittently and for a short period of time and do not leave a residual effect in elderly people with sleep-wake rhythms.

It is best to use sleeping pills as part of a comprehensive treatment, including cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, with a sleep specialist accurately diagnosing the patient’s sleep problems.

3. Is sleep talking a disease?

Sleep medicine does not see sleep talking as a disease. Therefore, if only sleep talking is indicated, it is not treated. However, there are cases in which sleep talking is manifested as symptoms such as REM sleep disorder, night epileptic seizures, etc. In this case, the disease should be treated.

Sometimes sleep talk is so loud and frequent that it interferes with someone’s sleep. Also, the content of sleep talking can cause problems, such as calling the name of the person you were dating before getting married, or saying something that offends the listener. Even in these cases, you will have to think about treatment.

4. What is sleepwalking? Is it harmful to wake up during sleepwalking?

Sleepwalking is common in children whose brains are not mature enough. People with sleepwalking usually wake up and fall asleep at the beginning of sleep (within 3 hours of sleep), which often surprises people around with their eyes open.

Sleepwalking is a phenomenon caused by external stimulation (usually noise) during a deep sleep phase, where part of the brain wakes up and the other part stays asleep. That’s why the next morning the party can’t remember it.

Sleepwalking in children usually disappears as the brain matures, reducing its incidence. Therefore, no special treatment is required. However, while sleepwalking occurs, there is a risk of getting around and hitting furniture, and you can even go out through an open door or window. Therefore, for the safety of children, it is necessary to pay close attention, such as removing dangerous objects and locking the door.

It is very difficult to wake up a child who is sleepwalking, as only a portion of the brain is awake during the deep sleep phase. Of course, it is not directly harmful to shake and wake a child, but a child who has just woken up will be very confused. It is best for children who sleepwalk to lie down softly and safely into the bed.

5. What is the cause of bruxism and what are the treatments?

Grinding or clenching during sleep, and sleep disturbance due to stimulation and pain at this time are collectively referred to as bruxism. With bruxism, the noise can interfere with people’s sleep. In addition, bruxism can cause the teeth to wear out quickly, resulting in toothache, pain around the jaw and headaches.
During bruxism, the lower and upper teeth move horizontally, causing friction. The tooth is structurally strong against the vertical force, but very weak against the horizontal force.

Although bruxism may occur in people with intellectual retardation or cerebral palsy, it can most often occur in children or adults who do not have special physical problems. Bruxism is closely related to anxiety and stress caused by psychological factors. Bruxism is so common that 14 to 17% of children develop symptoms, and decreases with age, decreasing to 12% for adolescents and 8% for adults, and 3% for older adults.

Bruxism is common among people with strong motivation and attention, and it is also said that the bite of the teeth is not correct. Life stress, excessive work, and chasing due to deadlines are related to triggering bruxism. Smoking and caffeine intake also awaken during sleep and cause bruxism.

Bruxism is diagnosed and evaluated for severity by polysomnography. Bruxism occurs well during stages 1 and 2 of non-REM sleep, and rarely occurs during REM sleep.
Through the polysomnography test, it is confirmed after excluding other sleep disorders that may be accompanied by bruxism such as respiratory-related sleep disorders, REM sleep behavior disorders, night vision and epilepsy.

If you have bruxism, you need to find and eliminate or reduce stress factors that have recently become worse. Biofeedback can reduce stress response. You should also reduce smoking and caffeine intake. If bruxism continues, to prevent tooth damage, dentists wear mouth guards and wear them.

6. Why is it difficult for adolescents to wake up in the morning?

As adolescence passes, the cycle of the day becomes longer. The longer the cycle, the slower the time you fall asleep. The sleep cycle begins late, so the time to end is also delayed, so it is difficult for adolescents to wake up in the morning.

In addition, adolescents do a lot of different activities, naturally increasing the amount of work to be done late at night, and thus the demand for sleep. In other words, adolescents need to sleep a lot, which means they have less time to sleep. When they are sleepy during the day, they drink drinks that contain caffeine, such as coke. As a result, adolescents repeat a vicious cycle that makes it harder to fall asleep at night and more difficult to get up in the morning.

To solve adolescent sleep problems, you need to keep the morning time constant and maintain that pattern over the weekend. And it is better to shine bright light right after waking up in the morning.

Drinks containing caffeine should be avoided in the afternoon. They should also be ready to sleep after 10pm and reduce lighting to avoid exposure to bright light.

And they need to have at least 8 hours of sleep a day. It’s better to spend less time and spend more time during the day than to reduce sleep and increase activity time.

7. I have had a lot of dreams lately, what’s the problem?

Some people say that it is difficult to dream a lot. Especially if your dream content is not very good, it will not be pleasant to dream often.

If you sleep 8 hours, you will dream about 2 hours. But you say that one day you dreamed and some did not. This depends on whether you remember the dream or not. If you are very impressed with the content of your dreams, you are more likely to remember them. Also, if you wake up frequently in the middle of dreaming, you will be more likely to remember your dreams.

What you experience while dreaming is once stored in short-term memory. However, in order to remember the contents of the dream the next morning, you must pass on this experience to long-term memory. What is stored in short-term memory requires you to wake up to move to long-term memory. Therefore, having a lot of dreams means you often wake up while you sleep. Of course, it is often difficult to remember that you woke up.

Normal people do not wake up so often during sleep. Usually, if you have a condition that prevents you from sleeping, such as sleep apnea, periodic limb motility, you often wake up and remember your dreams better, although you rarely remember. Dreams occur during REM sleep, so as the proportion of REM sleep increases, you will remember your dreams more often. For example, if you are depressed, you will have more REM sleep and remember your dreams better at dawn on the day you drink.