Sleep Dynamic Therapy

Archive for the ‘SDB’ Category

The interesting question here is who would be more likely to eat dark chocolate, drink green tea, or suffer from hypertension? The answer is an individual with a sleep disorder and the most likely sleep disorder would be sleep-disordered breathing (SDB). SDB fragments your sleep by causing your brain to repeatedly wake up during repeated episodes of obstructed breathing, which you are not aware of because you are asleep at the time, and you tend to fall back asleep in seconds, so you don’t remember the awakening. This sleep fragmentation causes you to feel tired and sleepy during the day, which prompts many people to seek an energy boost in caffeinated products, such as dark chocolate and green tea. SDB-induced sleep fragmentation also has been linked to hypertension

This talk was given in December 2003 at the University of New Mexico Dept of Psychiatry Grand Rounds. The title is the “Limits of Psychiatry in Treating Psychiatric Insomnia.” It reflects our growing interest in the relationships between sleep-disordered breathing and insomnia, particularly in mental health patients. Note the material on nocturia is dated and see Mary Umlauf’s work for a more comprehensive explanation for why sleep breathing patients wake up at night to use the bathroom. In short, the body is deceived into believing that a fluid overloaded state exists and so it must release a natural diuretic to “correct” the problem