Introduction

After you’ve put the last dinner dishes away and watched the evening news, you probably think about going to bed. But for the 40 million estimated Americans who suffer from a chronic sleep disorder, going to bed doesn’t necessarily mean going to sleep. And for the 20 to 30 million others who experience occasional sleep disturbances, nighttime isn’t a picnic.

Some researchers have postulated that the United States is the most sleep-deprived country. And it’s no wonder. With 24-hour factories and malls, high stress levels at work, and round-the-clock schedules, Americans barely have time to breathe, much less sleep a good eight hours every night. Even when you want to sleep, the cares of the day sometimes keep you from closing your eyes. In fact, according to The National Sleep Foundation, on any given night, slightly more than 1 in 4 Americans rate the quality of their night’s sleep as either “fair” or “poor.”

Of course, Americans aren’t alone in their devotion to round-the-clock living. Scandinavians stay up quite late as a way of dealing with their midnight sun. And many Northern European countries have more shift workers than the United States, and their citizens tend to drink much stronger coffee and more of it than Americans. So sleeplessness is truly an international problem.

Americans have a tendency to overlook their need for sleep, and many people just aren’t aware that chronic sleep deprivation not only puts them at higher risk for accidents, but also makes them more vulnerable to a whole host of physical ailments, including heart disease, high blood pressure, obesity, and diabetes, to name a few.

If you long to put your head down on your pillow and actually just fall asleep but don’t know how, or if you’re worried that you may have a sleep disorder but don’t know where to look for help, Sleep Disorders For Dummies is the book for you. It provides a comprehensive overview of the most common sleep disorders (and most of the uncommon ones as well) and demystifies the diagnostic process that doctors use to pinpoint exactly what’s making you lose sleep. You discover the causes and symptoms of each sleep disorder and the most common treatments.

Maybe you don’t have a chronic sleep disorder. Maybe you’re just stressed out and your bedroom is too crowded and too hot, or your mattress is too hard. Sleep Disorders For Dummies addresses those problems, too. Discover all about sleep hygiene and how to turn your bedroom into a comfortable sleep retreat that welcomes you to the Land of Nod each night. Find out about common habits that can keep sleep away and you up walking the floors, and, of course, ways to overcome those habits.

One thing’s for sure. You’re not the only one having trouble getting to sleep or staying asleep. No matter if your problem is insomnia, sleepwalking, sleep apnea, or something else, this book is a great place to start looking for the answers you need to sleep well again.

About This Book

We assume you bought Sleep Disorders For Dummies because you or someone you love is having trouble sleeping. Although we can’t guarantee that putting this book under your pillow each night can make you sleep like a baby (osmosis doesn’t work in this situation), reading it can help you decide if your sleep problem is temporary or more serious, and whether or not you should see a doctor. You can discover all about sleep in these pages, and what happens to your brain and body when you don’t get enough.

If you’re suffering from sleep problems, you probably have lots of questions, such as:

Do I have a sleep disorder?

What sleep disorder do I have?

How are sleep disorders diagnosed?

Should I see a doctor?

What kind of doctor should I see?

This book can help you find answers to all your sleep-related concerns and start you back on the road to a good night’s sleep. And the best part is, you don’t have to read from cover to cover to find the information you need. The table of contents can help you decide where to get started.

Conventions Used in This Book

We want this book to be as user friendly as possible. To help you navigate through this book, we utilize a few conventions:

As far as possible, we use everyday language. Occasionally we use medical terms that may not be familiar to you. The first time new terms appear, we italicize them and provide a brief definition.

Boldfaced text is used to indicate the action part of numbered steps.

Monofont is used for Web addresses.

We use the term sleep lab globally in this book to refer to any testing facilities that diagnose sleep disorders of any sort.

What You Can Skip

We’ve written this book so that you can find information easily and easily understand what you find. And although we want to believe that you’re yearning to pore over every last word between the two yellow covers, we actually make it easy for you to identify “skippable” material. This information is the stuff that, although interesting and related to the topic at hand, isn’t essential for you to know:

Text in sidebars: The shaded gray boxes contain interesting information about sleep and sleep disorders, but the info is nonessential. You may skip these boxes if you’re short on time; we promise you won’t miss any critical information.

Anything with a Technical Stuff icon attached: This information is interesting but not critical to your understanding of sleep disorders.

The quizzes: If you absolutely hate taking tests, you’ll be pleased to discover the ones included in this book are optional, meant only to entertain you and help you gain a little insight into your sleep style and degree of sleepiness.

Foolish Assumptions

We assume you are having trouble getting to sleep or have a family member or close friend who is having problems with sleep. We also assume that you bought this book because you’re looking for current, helpful information about sleep disorders, their diagnosis, and treatment.

This book contains the most up-to-date information available when it was written, but we hope you don’t assume that it’s a substitute for the good advice and hands-on care of your personal physician.

How This Book Is Organized

We divide Sleep Disorders For Dummies into five parts. Each part covers a different aspect of sleep disorders or sleep hygiene.

Part I: I Couldn’t Sleep at All Last Night

Part I looks at the whole concept of sleep, what it is and what it isn’t, and the vital role it plays in your continued physical and emotional health and well-being. You discover how to evaluate your sleep habits and look for the clues that indicate you may have a sleep disorder. You also find out how to distinguish occasional sleeplessness from problem sleeplessness and review brief introductions to the various sleep disorders that we discuss in-depth in later chapters. We introduce you to the idea of keeping a sleep diary, walk you step by step through the diagnostic process, and provide you with some good questions to ask your doctor during the diagnostic process. By the time you finish Part I, you should have a diagnosis in mind and be ready to tackle your sleep disorder head-on.

Part II: Insomnia: The Most Famous Dyssomnia of Them All

In Part II you find everything you ever wanted to know about all the different kinds of insomnia, what causes it, and how it’s treated. We provide a comprehensive review of the many different medical conditions that can disrupt sleep, including pain, breathing problems, heart disease, indigestion, and acid reflux disease, as well as psychological and emotional problems that can disrupt sleep. Part II is also loaded with practical information to help you change both your habits and your habitat to promote better sleep, and these tips can help anyone who has problems sleeping, not just people with insomnia.

Part III: Everything You Need to Know about Other Troubling Dyssomnias

Part III takes you on a guided tour of circadian rhythm disorders, conditions that cause sleepers to mix up their nights and days or shift their awake time to the night and sleepy time to the day. You also explore how garden-variety snoring is distinguished from the more dangerous snoring that can accompany sleep apnea. You uncover the many different devices and techniques used to treat sleep apnea, everything from custom-fitted dental appliances to surgery. Finally, we review narcolepsy and provide the latest research and treatment information for this baffling disorder.

Part IV: Walking, Talking, and Other Parasomnias

Part IV introduces you to the unusual world of parasomnias, sleep disorders that make you behave in certain ways even though you’re still asleep. Here you find out all about sleepwalking, talking in your sleep, and nightmares and night terrors (there is a difference) to name a few. We tell you about the causes and typical symptoms, and how each parasomnia is treated. We finish by providing a host of practical suggestions to help you live with your parasomnia and manage your most troubling symptoms. We also explore the world of pediatric sleep disorders (yes, children can have sleep disorders, too) and provide plenty of savvy tips to help parents get their kids to sleep with less fuss.

Part V: The Part of Tens

The Part of Tens is a For Dummies tradition, which contains quick resources that provide plenty of information in an easy-to-digest fashion. Sleep Disorders For Dummies contains three Part of Tens chapters. We introduce you to the top ten sleep disrupters and tell you how to conquer them, and give you ten signs that your significant other has a sleep disorder, along with some practical tips you can use starting tonight to help everyone sleep better. We finish by providing ten ways to turn your bedroom into a sleep sanctuary.

Finally, tucked in the back of the book, we provide an appendix chock full of helpful resources for people with sleep disorders, and for anyone just looking for a better night’s sleep (or a better mattress!).

Icons Used in This Book

The icons in this book help you find particular kinds of information that may be of use to you:

Tips are little snippets of information that guide you to interesting Web sites or tell you easier ways to get something done.

When you see this icon, remain on the look out for scams and dangerous situations, or read about valuable information and alerts you can use to protect yourself and your loved one.

This icon points out particularly important bits of information you should squirrel away in your brain for quick recall later.

Technical stuff icons point out data and statistics that may be of interest to readers who like to discover scientific facts and figures. If you’re not interested in the details, skip these paragraphs; you won’t miss any need-to-know information.

Where to Go from Here

Actually, we’re hoping you go straight to bed and sleep soundly for eight hours! But if that’s not possible, you may want to read Part I to get a thorough understanding of the basics of sleep and sleep disorders and how they’re diagnosed. After that, you can use the table of contents to look up specific topics of interest and read those sections. Each section flows into the next, but we also wrote it to stand on its own.

Because the book is arranged in a modular fashion that allows you to jump in wherever you want, we provide plenty of cross-references within the text to help you find additional topics of interest.