Why Sleep Evaluation Matters

At Razzack & Associates, we encourage people to look after their own sleep health. Sleep journals, bed-time routines, and careful use sleeping aids are steps that can improve anyone’s rest. Even minor conditions can be partly managed at home, such as by sleeping upright in order to reduce the effects of sleep apnea. Despite the amount of good you can do by yourself, however, want to remind everyone that there’s no replacement for a proper sleep evaluation.

Even if you work very hard to make sure you have stable, uninterrupted, sleep, and even if you think you have very good ideas about the nature of your sleeping conditions (such as sleep apnea), a full sleep evaluation, known as a polysomnography, involves the use of technology to measure things that simply can’t be viewed at home. Sometimes, these findings can reveal essential and even life-saving information about a person’s sleep patterns.

An example: Did you know that there is a kind of narcolepsy which, instead of causing people to experience extensive daytime sleepiness and ‘pass out,’ interrupts sleeping states during normal sleeping hours? People who suffer from this kind of narcolepsy, such as this author don’t enter the rejuvenating, delta-wave sleep state for very long. This means that even if they are unconscious for seven to ten hours a night, they are only spending a small fraction of that sleep in delta-wave sleep, which is crucial to rejuvenating the body and restoring mental function. The result is a consistent lack of focus, irritability, and difficulty getting out of bed.

On the life-saving spectrum of things, a polysomnography can also reveal the kinds of complications emerging from an interrupted sleep pattern. It can reveal, for example, whether or not a sleep apnea patient experiences hypertension throughout the night. If they do, then the polysomnography can help prepare the patient to look after their cardiovascular health with other specialists, since it’s been determined that they’re at-risk duet to the results of the sleep evaluation.

To make a long story short: if you’re looking after your own sleep health, keep doing it! Just don’t forget that if you or somebody you know continuously presents the symptoms of sleep disorder, there’s no reason to try to solve it alone. Sleep specialists in the United States help 80-90% of their patients achieve better sleep every year, so it’s worth your time to schedule a consultation with a professional.