A sleep study is a close examination of your sleep. Typically you sleep overnight in the RNI Sleep Clinic, and you are closely monitored with a variety of instrumentation. The proper name for a sleep study is “polysomnography.”
Polysomnography monitors many body functions including electrical signals in the brain, eye movements, muscle activity, heart rhythm, and breathing function during sleep. Home sleep studies try to detect sleep apnea in fairly obvious patients, but most of the time an in lab study is necessary to find out if you have a milder form or sleep apnea, or Upper Airway Resistance Syndrome. This is a disorder that is associated with fatigue, non-restorative sleep, excessive daytime sleepiness, poor memory and concentration, headache, and snoring, even in young people who are not overweight and who do not have large necks. In fact, you can have UARS and be downright skinny! And it can often cause insomnia, both trouble going to sleep and staying asleep.
Seeing is Believing
The resulting sleep study tells an amazing story about how you sleep. At RNI we know that “seeing is believing” – patients who see for themselves how they sleep are more likely to stick with the therapy we prescribe. Patients need this perseverance, because fixing sleep problems often requires breaking habits that were acquired over decades. Perseverance is rewarded, though, as patients almost always report major improvements in their lives with sleep therapy.
Wherever you get a sleep study, make sure your doctor will go over your results with you in person. We always do so at RNI.
Nervous about a sleep study?
The idea of a sleep study can be intimidating for patients. It means sleeping in an unfamiliar place, wearing more equipment to bed than you’re probably used to. Many patients are nervous that they won’t “sleep their best” in the sleep clinic, and perhaps wonder if that will ruin the test.
Don’t worry. This is a test you can’t fail.