When it's time to go to a sleep clinic

While there are an estimated 60 million Americans who suffer from bouts of insomnia every year, doctors are woefully undertrained to deal with it.

When you consider all recent the research about the effects of insufficient sleep, including heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, weight gain, not to mention decreased job performance, etc., the lack of attention insomnia is getting in medical schools is shameful.

Look up sleep specialist in your healthcare provider’s physician list and you’ll probably come up empty. Most people go to their general practitioner or internist with sleep problems. The fact is, they generally don’t know much about it.

Todd Arnedt, director of the University of Michigan's Insomnia and Behavioral Sleep Medicine Program, saysm "Doctors don't learn about sleep as they go through college, so sleep disorders often get missed in primary care settings. It's only after years of struggling that patients finally end up in our specialty clinics, looking for answers, searching for solutions."

They certainly know how to write scripts for ambien, or lunesta and the like – but while these sleep aids will they do not get at the root of sleep issues. (Now mind you I have nothing against sleep aids. Sometimes they are necessary. In fact, working as a healthcare copywriter, I was one of the writers on the Ambien CR account. )

Let me go further. My interest in the subject stems from my own bouts of insomnia. Ambien was is helpful. But at a certan point, knowing the risks of continued use – I sought the help of people who really know how to treat insomnia – and went to a sleep clinic.

It is something I advise anyone who endures more than just an occasional sleepless night. When it starts to become chronic insomnia, bigger problems can occur. While I hate to bring up tragic news, when you think back to Michael Jackson’s death – insomnia was at the very heart of what did him in.

He was so desperate for sleep (and had the means and the nuttiness) to hire a personal doctor to give him nightly anesthesa to get to sleep, until of course, something went wrong.

Gayle Greene, author of Insomniac, talks about just how debilitating sleep deprivation can be."Sleep is the fuel of life." Green says. "It's nourishing; it's restorative. And when you are deprived of it, you are really deprived of a basic kind of sustenance."

The point is – chronic insomnia can lead to serious consequences. And the best place to deal with it is at a legitimate sleep clinic.

A much more thorough diagnosis of your sleep issues. They’ll determine whether it is something structrual, such as sleep apnea, and look at various other possibilities:

Is it situational? Is it work related? Is it related to your surroundings and envirnoment? Is it behavioral-based? Or does it stem from anxiety or depression?

Knowing precisely what form your insomnia takes is vital to treating it.

In some cases, particularly if sleep apnea is suspected, you might be asked to stay overnight so they can measure brain wave activity and other signs that may tell them more accurately about your sleep patterns.

Likely treatment

One of the more common treatments that is tried, often successfully, at sleep clinics is sleep restriction therapy. Sleep restriction is a kind of cognitive behavorial approach. Based on your sleep history, you will be assigned a specifed number hours when you can stay in bed.

You cannot go to bed before or stay in bed after the alotted period. If you are lying awake for a period of 20 minutes, you must to get out out bed, until you think you can go back to sleep. If you do not fall asleep you need to get out of bed again.

No matter how little sleep you got, yo must get up at the specfied hour every day.

What happens is that you build sleep debt, and in many cases your inner clock is reset.

They may try other treatments with you. In a sense it is a kind of trial and error process to see what works for you. It all needs to be carefully montiored and supervised – the kind of attnetion yo can only get at a sleep clinic. Most doctors are not trained in these therapies, would not know what to do.

Since many people in need of better sleep care know little about sleep clinics I’ve started a list of sleep clinics on my insomnia toolkit website. I’ll be adding more. If you think there is a sleep clinic or a sleep specialist I should be aware of please leave a comment here .