It’s one thing if you feel like you can’t keep your eyes open during the day occasionally, but what could it mean if you feel like slumbering during the daylight hours more often than not?
At Houston Neurological Institute, our committed provider team of neurologists and sleep specialists are intent on finding answers — and offering relief — to our patients. This means going the extra mile, truly listening, and crafting a personalized treatment plan that takes your unique needs and diagnosis into account.
If you feel drowsy during the day, it could be for any number of reasons, from having a baby who kept you up all night to a sore tooth. These are situational problems, though, and chronic daytime sleepiness may point to a sleep disorder — a condition that impacts how much sleep you get and your rest quality.
Research shows that poor sleep may raise a person’s risk for serious health conditions, including heart disease, stroke, dementia, type 2 diabetes, and certain cancers.
Multiple sleep disorders can contribute to feeling tired during the day, when you want to be your most productive at work, school, and home. They include:
According to the American College of Sleep Medicine, at least 25 million people live with sleep apnea, which causes you to stop breathing for brief periods throughout the night.
This oxygen shortage occurs because the soft tissue at the back of your throat relaxes when you fall asleep and blocks your windpipe. This deprivation causes you to awaken briefly, and it can happen as many as hundreds of times per night.
Other symptoms include loud snoring and overall restlessness.
This sleep disorder interferes with your sleep because it causes leg discomfort, followed by an uncontrollable urge to move them. It’s a persistent problem once it starts, and though restlessness happens often when you get into bed for the night, symptoms can also occur when you’re simply sitting in a chair.
RLS can start anytime, but it worsens with age.
Narcolepsy goes beyond making you sleepy during the day — it causes you to fall asleep — even if you’re right in the middle of doing something. It can be deceiving, too. Although you might feel fine upon waking in the morning, it creeps up during the day, and poof — you’re out like a light!
Other narcolepsy symptoms include insomnia or fragmented sleep during the night, sleep paralysis (brief periods when you can’t move as you’re falling asleep or starting to awaken), or cataplexy (unexpected muscle weakness when you’re awake, that can be caused by intense negative or positive emotions).
In various stages of the sleep-wake cycle, abnormal electrical activity in the brain can prompt a nocturnal seizure if you live with epilepsy. Your arms and legs may jerk uncontrollably, you might scream, and typically you feel disoriented.
All of these sleep disorders cause daytime tiredness, but they can also lead to other problems like weight gain, difficulty focusing, and irritability.
Fortunately, your Houston Neurological Institute provider can give you an accurate diagnosis, thanks to advanced testing at our on-site sleep center, and we provide innovative treatments to get you up and running at full speed again.
To get to the root of your daytime fatigue, we offer:
Testing using at-home sleep monitors is also available.
After finding the answer to why you’re tired during the day, we have a range of treatments available that can help.
For example, if you’re found to have sleep apnea, we may recommend that you use a CPAP machine at night or the innovative Inspire®, an implantable treatment, while prescription medications offer another way to get to sleep and stay asleep. Additionally, cognitive-behavioral therapy has been found to help patients with insomnia (CBT-i).
There are also quite a few things you can do at home to improve your sleep hygiene, or the routines you establish that can enhance your nighttime sleep experience. These include turning in at the same time each night, keeping tech gadgets out of the bedroom, and enjoying a book and a soothing cup of tea before bed.
Don’t suffer the discomfort, reduced productivity, and diminished well-being that disrupted sleep causes during the day. Call our Pasadena or Pearland, Texas, office to schedule an appointment, or book one online.
