Do You Suffer from Excessive Daytime Sleepiness?

If you are yawning all the time and feel that you want to get a nap many times during the day, you may be suffering from sleep deprivation. Excessive daytime sleepiness refers to the desire to fall asleep in the middle of the day due to a feeling of low energy level even after getting a full night’s rest.

While it may not sound like a very serious issue, this sleepiness could be the symptom of an underlying medical disorder that you may be suffering from. So don’t take it lightly and read on to see what could be the possible reason for this general feeling of sleepiness that seems to pervade your usual day.

Do You Suffer from Excessive Daytime Sleepiness?

What can cause excessive daytime sleepiness?

There can be a number of causes that lead to excessive daytime sleepiness. These include breathing disorders such as sleep apnea and upper airway resistance syndrome. These can cause interrupted sleep which you may not be aware of, but can cause the feeling of fatigue to linger. You feel un-rested because you actually do not get a good night’s rest.

Other sleep disorder can also be there such as restless legs syndrome or narcolepsy. It may not always be related to breathing disorders as sleep can be affected by many other medical conditions in the body.

It is also possible that the excessive sleepiness during the day is caused by clinical depression, head trauma, tumors or even drug abuse. There are also some people who may have a genetic predisposition to this problem. That means that some people need more than the average eight hours of sleep to feel well rested, so if they are unable to sleep for the duration that their bodies need, they have a tendency to feel sleepy all through the day. For them it is not so much as a medical problem, as a bodily requirement for more hours of sleep to feel fully rested.

Diagnosing excessive daytime sleepiness

If you have a tendency to feel lackluster and tired all through the day, and continue to be so even after enough time to sleep at night, you may want to test yourself for certain medical conditions. After all, prevention is always better than cure, and if you are feeling sleepy all the time it may already be time for a cure. The easiest way for you to diagnose excessive daytime sleepiness is to get in touch with a reputed doctor or specialist in the field.

Such a qualified person will be able to use tools such as the Multiple Sleep Latency Test or the Epworth Sleepiness Scale to diagnose the condition. Once the sleepiness is established they can further look for the reason that it is occurring. As the cause is isolated the doctor will be in a position to offer the right treatment for the patient.

Treating excessive daytime sleepiness is different from patient to patient. Since no two individuals will suffer from the condition due to the same underlying cause there is no standard treatment for the medical condition.