By Marisa Lepard / Full360 Correspondent
When people have trouble sleeping at night, they often automatically think of insomnia. Not able to fall asleep? Insomnia.
Not able to stop your mind racing? Insomnia.
Tossing and turning all night? Insomnia.
Insomnia is a common sleep disorder. In fact, one in three adults have symptoms of it according to Cleveland Clinic. Your mind doesn’t go to any other sleep disorder which could actually be the real cause of your lack of sleep. But there are other sleep disorders such as sleep apnea, circadian rhythm disorders, REM sleep disorder, and many more. Most people who think they have insomnia could actually have one of the other 20 disorders.
Sleep disorders are very prevalent among college students.Senior Pre Professional major at Delaware Valley University Sam Lloyd is among those who struggle to get to sleep “Snoring affects me the most because I feel stuffy and my throat is dry. I wake up frequently because I’m uncomfortable.”
They believe that they have sleep apnea, “I did study it in AP psychology and my symptoms seem to align. And I have family history that seems to support it.”
When asking Dr. Marion Mass, a Bucks County general pediatrician, about symptoms of other sleep disorders she replied, “Insomnia is 90% of it, I think the next biggest category is probably obstructive sleep apnea, second in terms of insomnia in sheer number; we’re probably seeing more of that nowadays. Sleep apnea is also much higher in patients that carry extra weight,“ she said. “There are lots of things that are much less common like restless leg syndrome, patients feel this irresistible urge to move their legs around and can’t get back to sleep, there’s parasomnias, like sleep walking, periods of wakefulness, or disturbed sleep, there’s nightmare syndromes that you can have, [but] they’re all dwarfed by insomnia itself.”
Although insomnia is most common, other disorders could be affecting someone. Not every time you can’t sleep is due to insomnia; it could be linked to other things like bad sleep hygiene, she said.
Dr. Mass spoke about how important sleep hygiene is and how things such as “the light in the room has a routine that is calming and soothing before bedtime soft music, meditation, things like that are important towards sleep hygiene.”
Mass she shared her own personal experience with insomnia. “I had insomnia when I was 41 years old after having a lifetime of blissfully easy sleep and it was like such a market difference. I could tell you the exact day of the week that it happened on.” As we get into our adult lives, it isn’t uncommon to come across sleep problems at some point. It is important that we take care of ourselves.
The answer isn’t always a need for sleep medication, she said. Dr. Mass believes it is important to think about “what can I do to control the basic things around me to help me sleep better.
“Like, caffeine consumption is certainly a big one, I think exercise is really important, eating is really important, [and] good eating habits in general.” It’s important to look at your everyday habits to better understand what could be causing someone not to sleep.
Mass mentioned the best suggestion she’s ever gotten from anyone, which was when she went to a sleep specialist during the time she was suffering from not being able to sleep.
“The sleep specialist told me to find a prayer, a poem, a mantra, something that you can recite instead of citing it in your head, actually whisper it, the physical act of whispering something prevents the barrage of thoughts coming into your head.”