These days more and more people have trouble falling and staying asleep. It might happen occasionally and can be caused by stress and information overload. But chronic problems with sleep and constant daytime fatigue could be signs of some serious health conditions. Sleeping disorders might affect your health and the quality of life.
If you don’t sleep well, don’t rush to conclusions. First, check your sleeping environment and pre-sleep routine. If improving those haven’t helped, then you might want to find out whether you have a sleep disorder that’s affecting your precious rest.
It might be a good idea to examine your sleep and see if it has a negative impact on your everyday life. You can start tracking the quality of your rest with a sleep journal. Write down how long it takes you to fall asleep, how much sleep you get each night, how well you sleep, how many times per night you wake up and how often you take naps. You can also write a sentence or two about your daytime routine and then see if it affects your sleep in any way. Such journal will help monitor your sleep and find out the main sleep distractions.
Talk to your bed partner or your roommate and ask if he/she noticed anything strange in your sleep patterns. There are some sleep-related things that we simply can’t notice ourselves. Maybe you toss and turn a lot or snore.
Sleep disorders might be caused by a number of factors: environmental (light, noise), medical conditions (such as asthma), working night shifts. But stress and anxiety are the most influential ones – they not only cause problems with sleep but make the existing ones even worse.
Some most common sleep disorders are insomnia, narcolepsy, hypersomnia, snoring and sleep apnea. Check out our tips for more information about these disorders.