Sleep Disorders Counselling

Sleep is a state of giving your body and mind a break or rest from daily activity, scientifically for a healthy life, 7-8 hours of good sleep is recommended for optimal health. But there are conditions that change the way you sleep and these conditions are called sleep disorders. Sleep disorders can be simply defined as the elements that disrupt the natural sleep cycle affecting your overall quality of life including your physical and mental health. Some of the common symptoms of sleep disorders include difficulty falling asleep in the night, sleepiness during daytime, irregular breathing or increased movement during sleep, irregular sleep patterns.

Some common types of sleep disorders:

• Insomnia: one of the most common sleep disorders in which falling asleep or staying asleep in the night becomes difficult or in some cases impossible to do.
• Sleep apnea: in which you experience unusual breathing patterns while you are asleep.
• Jet Lag: a sleep disorder that happens to people who frequently travel to different time zones.
• Sleep Walking: You get up in the middle of the night and start walking while asleep.
• Restless legs syndrome (RLS): It is also called Willis-Ekbom disease, this sleep disorder causes an uncomfortable sensation in the legs generating an urge to move the legs while you try to fall asleep.
• Night Terror: also commonly known as sleep terror a sleep, a disorder that causes a feeling of panic or dread.
• Narcolepsy: with this disorder you experience extreme sleepiness during the day, even so that you might suddenly fall asleep in the daytime.

Common causes of sleep disorders:

There are various types of sleep disorders and countless number of reasons may produce sleep disorder in an individual. For adults the disorder and the reason for the disorder may be different than children or older adults. For example: Night terror or sleep terror disorder is found mostly in children than adults and insomnia is found mostly in young adults compared to children. Listed below are the some of the common causes of sleep disorders:

• Underlying medical conditions resulting in chronic pain from headaches, arthritis etc.
• Psychological conditions like depression, anxiety and excessive stress etc.
• Unusual work timings, especially night shift work can disrupt the natural sleep cycle.
• Excessive consumption of caffeine, nicotine, alcohol and other substances.
• Medications can also disrupt and interfere with the natural sleep cycle, like medication for antidepressants, blood pressure etc.
• Other factors like brightness in the room or your partner snores.

Tips to improve sleeping patterns:

Although there are different treatments for different types of sleep disorder, you should always consider talking to a sleep disorder expert/counsellor to see if the disorder can be treated without the use of any medication. Below are some tips to improve sleeping patterns:

• Avoid consuming substances that keep you awake like caffeine and alcohol etc.
• Taking a warm water bath before sleeping helps in inducing sleep.
• Change your bedroom environment into a more sleep inducing environment, like dim lights, less sounds etc.
• Eat a light meal in the evening.
• Read a book rather than watching a phone or a laptop screen at least 1 hour before going to sleep.
• Go to bed at the same time and wake up at the same time everyday.
• Early morning exercising will help you fall asleep early in the night.
• Meditation before sleeping can help you with an improved sleep pattern.
• Your bedroom temperature should be balanced for a better sleep quality.
• Try to avoid long daytime naps.

Finding a sleep disorder counsellor at OnlineCounselling4U. We make choosing the best therapist for you a little easier. From the comforts of your home, you can find help from our trained online behavioural counsellors at just a single click or connect to them on the phone, email or chat. In addition, you can take online counselling sessions from them in your preferred languages like Hindi, English, Punjabi, Bengali, Tamil, Marathi, Urdu, Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada, Odia and Telugu or any other regional language within India or abroad. When you take advice from any of our top online counsellors, your information is kept 100% confidential and anonymous.

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