There are times when most of the individuals find themselves sleepy due to jet lag, after a meal, etc. Sometimes people don’t take such health conditions seriously due to lack of awareness about the different type of sleep disorders. A health condition needs to have appropriate treatment.

Many doctors highly recommend using Pill Reminder, an application that helps the patients to take their pills on time with personalized periodic reminder settings such as Snooze, taken or skip, etc. It is an excellent advantage for the patients as it is useful while traveling, other outdoor activities, etc. with the help of an Android/iOS mobile phone or signing up the website as per the availability to use.

What is Idiopathic Hypersomnia (IH)?

Idiopathic Hypersomnia (IH) is an excessive sleep disorder that causes drowsiness during the day even after a good night sleep. In medical terms, it refers to as primary hypersomnia, central hypersomnia, or brain origin of hypersomnia. While working or driving a car, the need for sleep strikes at this time, that makes IH a potentially dangerous health condition.

IH has two forms of this health disorder: firstly, when a person has an average hour of sleep, usually for 9 hours and secondly, when an individual oversleep for like 12-14 hours.

The doctors treat it as a life – long chronic condition. This health problem often develops over a week to months. Some research institute defines Idiopathic Hypersomnia (IH) as Excessive day sleepiness (EDS) without narcolepsy.

Symptoms

The symptoms may vary between weeks, months, or years in different cases. Especially in women, the signs and symptoms may worse before menses.

People who suffer from idiopathic hypersomnia have issues of excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS) despite sleeping for more than 10 hours that is beyond the standard requirement of the human body; they may often look unrefreshing and suffer from sleep inertia.

Some symptoms of Idiopathic hypersomnia (IH) include:

1. Memory, attention, and concentration problems (cognitive problem)
2. Anxiety and depression
3. Syncope (fainting)
4. Orthostatic hypertension (dizziness while standing up from a lying or sitting position)
5. Headache
6. Raynaud’s disease – cold hands and feet.
7. Impotence
8. Food cravings
9. Sleep paralysis
10. Sleep drunkenness – a condition when the individual has long frequent naps, that is not refreshing, too difficult to wake up or post-awakening experience.

Many people find it difficult to follow their regular routines, and sometimes they lose their ability to function in social gatherings.

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Causes

Unlikely, there are few other sleep disorder condition (narcolepsy with cataplexy)  that has some serious reason, the real reason for Idiopathic hypersomnia is still unknown other than its name, for this one should track their sleep. Many researchers claiming to have recently found an abnormal hypersensitivity to GABA ( a brain chemical responsible for sedation) in patients who are suffering from central hypersomnia, i.e., Idiopathic hypersomnia.

Most of the doctors stated that the treated patients who have a history of Idiopathic hypersomnia also have anxiety and depression – causes of this health disorder. If left untreated, it is not safe for these patients to drive a car or doing their regular chores.

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Diagnosis

For some reasons, it is challenging to figure out the type of sleep disorder to diagnose, as the symptoms of this health problem may falsely be considered as some other type of sleep disorder. It is hard to diagnose due to similar signs and symptoms of this health condition.

After reviewing the medical history and conducting a physical examination of the patients, including their medications. Doctors may recommend doing specific tests to determine the type and cause of this condition.

1. Polysomnogram test helps the doctors to monitor the patient’s brain activity, eye, and leg movements, heart rate, breathing, and oxygen levels. In this test, the patient has to stay asleep overnight.
2. Epworth Sleepiness Scale: This tool helps to determine the sleep effects of the patient’s daily life. The doctors ask their patients to rate their sleepiness with the help of this tool.
3. Sleep diary: The patients have to maintain a sleep diary to record their daily sleep, numbers of times waking up, etc. as per the concerned doctor gives the instructions.
4. Multiple sleep latency tests: After conducting a polysomnogram test, this test is done. It helps to measure the type of sleepiness and stages of sleep during the daytime naps.

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Treatment

Doctors try to cure the symptoms of any further health complications. However, there is no proper treatment and cure for Idiopathic Hypersomnia (IH).  Many doctors prescribe stimulant medications to their patients for improving their health conditions. Certain medicines given to the patients are:

1. Provigil (Modafinil) helps to stay awake during the day.
2. Adderall
3. Nuvigil

Few techniques  to combat this health condition that are:

1. Avoid caffeine, alcohol and other medications
2. Adopt a healthy sleep hygiene
3. Turn off electronic devices at night
4. Switch off room lights
5. Avoid taking sleeping pills without consulting the concerned doctor.

The concerned doctors may refer to consult a sleep specialist to provide much help to their patients to tackle excessive day sleepiness. The main intention is to improve their body sleep and wake regulation.

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How to manage IH (Idiopathic hypersomnia)

Many individuals do not notice their sleep problem due to lack of awareness about health. If ignored, it is a severe concern to further health complications.  There are many factors due to which such kind of health problem still exists, like lifestyle changes, etc.

The best way to manage IH is to take advise from the concerned doctor or sleep specialist regarding the situation. Also, talking to family, friends, colleagues, etc. will help to have mutual support to tackle this health problem.

The concerned doctor has access to their patient’s Pill Reminder application to check their health condition through log reports and day-to-day routines. The patient finds it useful to track their water consumption levels to improve their health.

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