Sleep Easy Understanding the most common sleep disorders is the first step toward getting a good night's rest

Tossing and turning. Counting sheep. Watching the alarm clock tick toward sunrise. So goes the agony of a sleepless night, a lonely experience when it seems the rest of the world is snoozing soundly. But if the statistics are any indication, you really aren’t alone. The National Sleep Foundation (NSF) estimates that nearly 60 percent of American women are functioning on too little sleep a problem with serious long-term health implications. As national Sleep Awareness Week commences March 3-9, experts are sounding the alarm. Studies show that the chronically sleep-deprived are more likely to be obese and suffer everything from diabetes and depression to the common cold or flu. Sleeplessness impairs memory and thought processes, including concentration. And sleeping only six hours a night has been shown to increase your risk of heart disease by nearly 20 percent. “Optimal sleep for the average person is seven to nine hours a night,” says Dr. Mary Klink, clinic director at Wisconsin Sleep in Madison. “But you can function with less sleep you just don’t function optimally.” In fact, studies have shown that sleeping just six hours a night and being awake for 18 consecutive hours makes you perform behind the wheel as if you were legally drunk. For many of us, daytime fatigue and nocturnal restlessness are merely due to poor sleep habits. But, a growing number of people are also suffering from a variety of sleep disorders that make getting a good night’s rest virtually impossible.

What is a sleep disorder? Nearly 40 million Americans suffer from a sleep disorder, defined as a medical disorder in sleep patterns. While dozens of disorders have been identified, “We generally see one of three [types of] patients: people who don’t sleep enough, people who sleep too much and people who are doing unusual things in their sleep,” says Dr. Kathryn Middleton, specialist with St. Mary’s Sleep Center. Lucky for the sleep-deprived of southern Wisconsin, two new sleep centers have recently opened in our area, joining the already established TMJ & Sleep Center in Middleton: St. Mary’s Sleep Center, in partnership with Dean Health, and Wisconsin Sleep, a center composed of a clinic managed by the University of Wisconsin Medical Foundation (UWMF) and supported by a lab that is a partnership between Meriter Hospital and UWMF. Both St. Mary’s Sleep Center and Wisconsin Sleep diagnose and perform sleep studies, usually an overnight stay in which the patient’s brain waves and sleep patterns are analyzed, whereas the TMJ & Sleep Center treats patients with diagnosed snoring and sleep apnea. Patients are referred to the centers by their primary care physicians. But quite often, it has taken them some time to get there. “Years ago there was a National Sleep Foundation poll asking patients how many told their doctors that they were having trouble sleeping,” says Middleton. The results? Remarkably few. Unfortunately, many people don’t take their nighttime sleep problems or daytime fatigue as a sign that something could be seriously wrong. Such was the case for Linda Mueller.

An accidental diagnosis Mueller never thought she had a sleep disorder, even though she’d been having a terrible time sleeping and works as a nurse at St. Mary’s Sleep Center. “I was a very restless sleeper,” she says. “I had very bad night sweats. All night the sheets would be going on and off and I’d wake up drenched. By the end of the night I’d think ’OK, two hours of sleep I guess that’s as good as I can get.’” Mueller, like many women, attributed her symptoms to menopause. She asked Middleton if she could undergo a sleep study, not because of her own sleep problems, but so she could relate to her patients better. After a night being studied, doctors surprised her with a diagnosis: Mueller had sleep apnea.