I Have Insomnia: What Is Sleep Medicine?

About 12% of adults in the United States have been diagnosed with chronic insomnia. But just because you haven’t yet gotten a diagnosis, that doesn’t mean you don’t have it. Insomnia isn’t just tossing and turning; it’s not sleeping well and not feeling rested during the day during most days out of any 30 days.

You can have one or more types of insomnia, such as:

• Short-term insomnia: caused by stress or circumstances
• Chronic insomnia: difficulty sleeping at least three times a week for three months or more
• Sleep-onset insomnia: taking more than 30 minutes to fall asleep
• Sleep-maintenance insomnia: inability to sleep through the night; waking for 20 minutes or more at a time
• Terminal insomnia: waking up too early and not falling asleep again
• Comorbid insomnia: due to a health condition, including anxiety, sleep apnea, or reflux

In addition, you may experience other sleep issues that interfere with your rest, including sleep talking or sleep walking. You might also grind your teeth at night, creating jaw pain and damaging your teeth.

Our neurologiststs and sleep specialists at Advanced Medical Care consider rest an essential part of health. Your brain and body can’t function if you don’t get enough high-quality sleep. That’s why we offer sleep medicine at our offices in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, and Forest Hills, New York.

Sleep medicine is specific

Although some internet sleep hacks are useful and can help you improve your sleep hygiene, sleep medicine determines why you're not sleeping in the first place. Instead of general advice, you get specific data that relates to how you sleep and how well you sleep.

Once we gather that data, we customize a treatment plan for you. Instead of trying hack after hack, you get a plan that’s designed to treat your particular problems.

We test your sleep quality

In order to get to the cause or causes of your insomnia, we evaluate you on a number of levels. First, we take a complete medical history to determine if an underlying medical condition — such as chronic pain or gastroesophageal reflux disorder (GERD) — contributes to your poor quality sleep. Then we may conduct tests, such as:

Nocturnal polysomnography (NPSG)

During this overnight sleep study, we monitor how well you sleep and how well your body functions. We may attach different monitoring devices and wires to your head, chest, and legs at our office, or we might send you home with a test kit that you wear on your nose and finger. The NPSG monitors your:

• Breathing
• Blood oxygen level
• Heart rate
• Sleep stages
• Talking 
• Snoring
• Times you stop breathing
• Times you wake up

The NPSG helps us determine if you have a serious sleep breathing disorder called sleep apnea. The condition causes you to stop breathing for seconds to minutes at a time, robbing your body of oxygen and rest.

Multiple sleep latency test (MSLT)

The multiple sleep latency test takes place in our office during a full day, after you’ve undergone NPSG. Instead of measuring your sleep overnight, we measure how quickly you fall asleep in a quiet, calm environment during the day. You take a series of 15-minute naps.

Our team may order an MSLT if we think you have a disorder that interferes with your wakefulness during the day, such as narcolepsy. We monitor your sleep stages with sensors on your head. The data helps us design a treatment plan for your insomnia.

We give you a plan, not a hack

Once we’ve collected and interpreted the data from your tests, we then design a treatment plan that addresses all of the factors that interfere with your getting sufficient, high-quality rest and sleep each night. We may recommend:

• Continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine
• Bilevel positive airway pressure (BiPap) machine
• Oral appliance to remedy obstructive sleep apnea
• Nightguard to prevent teeth grinding
• Supplements to nourish your body and relax your brain
• Medications to alleviate anxiety or depression
• Stress reduction techniques
• Counseling, including cognitive behavior therapy for insomnia

We also help you integrate effective tips that help everyone sleep better, such as going to bed and waking up at the same time every night, sleeping in a dark, cool room and avoiding blue light or heavy meals before bedtime.

To sleep faster, better, and longer, contact Advanced Medical Care today for expert, individualized sleep medicine.