Dr. Aneesa Das consults with a patient about healthy sleep habits at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. Das says small behavioral changes like avoiding screens at night and maintaining consistent sleep and wake times can help you get a good night’s rest.
Adults generally need seven to nine hours of sleep every night. But millions of people across the country struggle with sleep disorders that keep them up all night.
“Sleep is when our body repairs everything from the day and it helps process,” Dr. Aneesa Das says. “So we process our memories, we do some of our complex problem solving and emotional repair during our sleep, we put short-term memories into long-term memories. Sleep helps us to feel refueled during the day.”
Das is a professor of medicine at The Ohio State University and an assistant director of its sleep program. With a background in pulmonary critical care, Das’ expertise covers all sleep medicine.
“Sleep medicine is one of the few fields that you can make just a massive impact on somebody’s quality of life,” Das says. “You’re invited into somebody’s most personal aspects of their life. So, your sleep is very intimate with your life and so it’s a lovely relationship that you end up getting to form with the patients as well.”
Patients usually struggle with either their quantity or quality of sleep. People who have trouble with their sleeping patterns usually have trouble falling asleep and difficulty staying asleep.
If your sleep issues persist for three months or more, it can begin to impact your quality of life. If you are having difficulty sleeping, Das says, you should begin with a visit to your primary care physician, who will be able to see how the whole body is affected.
“Sometimes I think that we underestimate the power of sleep in our whole well-being,” Das says. “A good night’s sleep affects our mood, it affects our health, it affects our immunity, our ability to fight infection and it can make somebody feel miserable.”
Sleep is important for the body to manage glucose levels and build up its natural immunity. Sleep insufficiency is when lack of sleep can affect your body’s ability to function. Sleep deprivation makes you more likely to catch a virus or a cold, and it can increase your risk of developing cardiovascular disorders like high blood pressure, strokes and heart failure.
The five most common issues people have affecting their ability to sleep are insomnia, sleep apnea, narcolepsy, restless legs syndrome and periodic limb movements.
Many people have behaviorally induced insufficient sleep syndrome, where their daily practices
can be the cause. There are simple habits a person can change to help. This includes keeping up with exercise and ensuring you have a healthy body mass index.
People who have trouble sleeping often try to go to bed earlier and earlier or decide to sleep in to catch up on sleep.
“Ironically, that tends to be one of the worst things you can do for insomnia, because what happens is you end up spending more time in bed and less time asleep,” Das says. “One of the best things you can do for your sleep is pick your wake time and get up no matter what. Whether you had a great night’s sleep or you had a bad night’s sleep, that is the time to get out of bed.”
Das recommends you try not to go to bed until you’re tired at night, try to be in bed and stick with the amount of time you actually want to be sleeping as opposed to trying to force it.
Additionally, you should keep out of your bedroom as much as possible when it’s not bedtime so your body can associate the room with sleeping.
“Your sleep should be in a sanctuary area, it should be where you look forward to actually going to sleep and the time for sleep and intimacy only,” Das says.
Another tip is to avoid artificial blue light as much as possible once the sun sets, helping to align your body’s sleep clock with the natural, solar clock.
Steps like this can be helpful to patients who may have more than one symptom of disordered sleep.
“Sometimes we’ll treat them at the same time, but we need to recognize that one might be exacerbating the other. We do have to be thoughtful about that,” Das says.
Increased stressors in life can affect our ability to sleep as well. Das says she and other sleep specialists have noticed an uptick in referrals for insomnia since the pandemic. This can be related to people’s moods as well as anxiety and depression.
Depression affects your behaviors by decreasing your motivation and making you feel tired. Anxiety can cause you to fret and keep you up – even over sleep itself. One type of insomnia is psychophysiological insomnia, where you cannot sleep because you’re worried about sleep.
“Part of it is identifying things that aren’t necessarily sleep disorders, so (people with) anxiety and depression absolutely lean towards insomnia,” Das says. “It might be worth seeing somebody about some of your other stressors so you can process those in a healthy way to allow you to sleep.”
Lindsey Capritta is a contributing writer at CityScene Media Group. Feedback welcome at feedback@cityscenemediagroup.com.
