What conditions can cause excessive daytime sleepiness?

If you are struggling to stay awake ( excessive daytime sleepiness ) for a long time during your work and other activities, it can obstruct your daily life. Most of the time, the sufferers cannot identify the leading cause of sleepiness.

What Is Excessive Daytime Sleepiness ?

Daytime sleepiness can cause a lot of problems for you; the reason behind

• It is having trouble waking up in the morning.
• feel sleepy during any time of the day.
• Feeling drowsy all the time.
• Feeling trouble in thinking or memory cannot work properly
• Anxiety, stress, and depression

More than 20% of adults are suffering from severe sleepiness that affects their regular activities

What causes excessive daytime sleepiness ?

If a problem prevents you from getting a good amount of sleep at night, it can cause you to get extra sleep during the day and create various problems. Other causes of daytime sleepiness include snoring or kicking and various other symptoms that hinder rest at night and bring excessive sleepiness in the daytime.

If you have a sleep disorder for some reason at night, only your bedmates can observe these symptoms. Whatever the reason, you should evaluate how your work is being interrupted due to sleep during the day.

Here are some common causes of excessive sleepiness mentioned below. If you can find out the proper reason, determining the excessive daytime sleepiness treatment becomes easy.

Sleep apnea

Sleep apnea is one of the excessive severe daytime sleepiness symptoms where your breathing can be stopped and repeatedly start throughout the night. So you feel sleepy during the day.

You should know that sleep apnea has different symptoms, such as:

• Snoring loudly in sleep and shortness of breath due to lack of air
• Feeling sore throat and headache after waking up
• Attention problems, lack of concentration and focus
• irritability

Apart from daytime sleepiness, Sleep apnea can lead to high blood pressure, heart problems, breathing problems, type 2 diabetes, and obesity.

• Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). The medical reason for this is that sometimes the tissue at the back of the throat relaxes during your sleep, and it partially covers the airways, and you feel short of breath.
• Central sleep apnea (CSA). This problem occurs when the nerves in the brain cannot send signals to the muscles, after which your breathing becomes controlled during sleep.
• Restless legs syndrome

Restless legs syndrome (RLS) 

You may feel irresistible and uncomfortable while moving your legs. Feeling of tingling or itching in the legs, you will never be able to lie down in peace. Simply put, RLS makes it harder for you to sleep and sleep, which leads to extra sleep the next day.

In some cases, the cause of RLS is not clear. However, about 10 percent of the US population suffers from this problem. Some studies have attributed this to low iron intake. Many scientists also point out that the brain’s basal ganglia are the leading cause of movement RLS. 

Narcolepsy

There are misconceptions about narcolepsy. Like RLS, it is a neurological disorder where the brain cannot regulate the sleep-wake cycle correctly.

It is prevalent for people with narcolepsy to wake up more than once a night. Then it is seen that extra day sleep continues during the day because there is not enough sleep at night. This person is often seen falling asleep in the middle of a conversation or during a meal.

Narcolepsy is not very common, affecting less than 200,000 people in the United States. Many people mistakenly call it a mental disorder. Narcolepsy is now affecting almost all ages, but it is more common in people between 7 and 25. 

Depression in Daytime Sleepiness

Depression can have many causes, but changes in your sleep schedule can often lead to depression. So when depression develops, you may get too much or too little sleep.

It is very common that if you do not get enough sleep at night, you may feel extra tired during the day. Depression may cause excessive sleep.

Depression has various potential reasons, such as unusual levels of chemicals in the brain, issues in the part of the brain that usually manages your mood, and traumatic events.

Medical Treatment

Most doctors will prescribe Artvigil or Waklrt to treat

Medication side effects

Taking some drugs may help develop drowsiness in the daytime; this is actually the side effect of that medicine. Those medicines are

• Treatments of high blood pressure
• antidepressants
• treat nasal congestion drug, known as antihistamines
• nausea and vomiting medicine are known as antiemetics
• antipsychotics
• Drug for epilepsy
• Medication for treating the anxiety

If your medication makes you sleepy or develops drowsiness, you need to discuss it with your doctor.

Aging

Some Studies have stated that though older people spend a considerable amount of time in bed, they do not get enough sleep. The study has stated that sleep quality has been declining since middle age.

Some of it is seen that as we get older, the number of deep sleep decreases, and sometimes we wake up in the middle of the night.

Idiopathic hypersomnia

Although you cannot determine the cause of excessive sleep, the cause of this problem is idiopathic hypersomnia (IH), a chronic neurological disorder that causes excessive sleep. If you suffer from this disease, you may suffer from daytime sleepiness, regardless of getting adequate or long rest.

The term “idiopathic” has been used since the cause is unknown; the exact cause of IH is currently unknown. It has been shown that people with IH cannot wake up despite setting alarms. It can also cause excessive sleepiness during the day.

Medical Treatment

Armodafinil (Nuvigil) is like modafinil in that it is a wake-elevating organization used to treat tiredness in patients who have narcolepsy or rest apnea. Gentle incidental effects are migraine and discombobulation. More genuine incidental effects can incorporate trouble breathing or gulping, melancholy, or contemplations of self-hurt. Most doctors will prescribe Artvigil or Waklert the cure excessive daytime sleepiness.