Sleep Disorders

Without treatment, sleep disorders can lead to daytime drowsiness and more serious health problems that can include high blood pressure, congestive heart failure, heart attack, diabetes, or stroke.

You may benefit from consulting a sleep specialist if you experience any of the following symptoms:

• Difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep
• Loud snoring or gasping
• Disrupted sleep
• Poor quality sleep
• Daytime fatigue
• Aches and pains, especially back pain
• Unusual behaviors during sleep (such as sleepwalking or sleep talking)

Our diagnosis of a patient’s sleep disorder is achieved through short-term or long-term EEG studies. While some assessments are performed in our lab’s comfortable, hotel-like sleep suites, others may be conducted in the familiar surroundings of your own home with CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machines.

Your method of treatment will be determined by the type and severity of your disorder, and can range from medication to the recommendation of personal CPAP equipment.

When CPAP treatment is appropriate, we help patients find the machine that’s right for them—then provide one-on-one instruction and remote monitoring services that ease long-term effectiveness and continued support from insurance.

Call (317) 468-4610 to schedule a consultation.

Some of the most common sleep disorders we treat at Hancock Health include:

Obstructive sleep apnea may cause you to stop breathing repeatedly during sleep due to a collapse of the airway. This is often caused by excess tissue in the back of the airway, a decrease in the tone of the muscles holding the airway open, or the tongue closing off the airway. Any of these can prevent air from entering the lungs, disrupting healthy sleep.

Narcolepsy is a chronic neurologic disorder where the body fails to distinguish between being asleep and awake. While symptoms vary in frequency and severity, daytime sleepiness occurs in 100% of patients with narcolepsy. Unfortunately, fewer than 50% of narcoleptic individuals are properly diagnosed and are often misdiagnosed with depression, fibromyalgia, or epilepsy.

Periodic limb movement disorder causes movements of the legs and arms that disrupt sleep, sometimes related to restless leg syndrome. The movements occur at regular intervals, usually every 30 seconds, and are clustered into episodes lasting anywhere from a few minutes to several hours. These limb movements may lead to excessive daytime sleepiness or sleep-maintenance insomnia.