Doctor On Call: Sleep Awareness Week

Doctor Michael Newnam from the Oklahoma Heart Institute joined us Monday to talk about Sleep Awareness Week.

What is chronic sleepiness?

"The term kind of just is self explanatory. It's this long standing, tiredness or sleepiness that doesn't seem to resolve. Obviously, there's temporary causes of sleepiness, like the time change. You lose an hour. All of a sudden, you feel like you lost that hour. And you just are kind of dragging to get out of bed and get going. Now that's temporary, most people adjust to that time change. But there are people and it's estimated that close to 20% of the population deals with ongoing every day sleepiness. And no matter how much sleep they get, they are sleepy," Dr. Newnam said.

How do you diagnose and treat sleepiness?

"So first thing we try to figure out is what the problem is, you know, is somebody getting enough sleep. And we recommend between seven and nine hours of sleep for most adults. And that's pretty big range. But a lot of folks are really struggling even to get the minimum of seven hours of sleep just because of responsibilities and schedules and the way that people run their lives. And so we first try to figure out, is that person getting enough sleep? Is there a cause? Do they have sleep apnea? Do they have a condition that would affect the quality of their sleep? And then we try to base our treatment based on what we're finding and what we're seeing," Dr. Newnam said.