Why missing 40 winks is more serious than you think

If you snore, you’re sleeping well, is a common misconception. In fact, the opposite is true.

Bad sleep has a clear association with heart problems, hypertension, stroke and even chronic kidney disease, says Sujeet Rajan, consultant respiratory physician at Bombay Hospital.

And that’s possibly why sleep is increasingly seen as no less important for the body as nutrition and exercise. In fact, obstructive sleep apnoea (where a person stops breathing several times at night) is a public health concern. And it accounts for a lion’s share of the over 80 types of sleep disorders that exist.

Unfortunately, a large chunk of people with sleep disorders go undiagnosed because few understand the gravity of the problem.

Despite getting nine hours of sleep, people do not wake up fresh and find it difficult to concentrate. But life in a metropolis means fatigue is a constant companion and no one associates this with sleep disorder, says Rajan.

Take snoring, for example. It means your system is not getting the required amount of oxygen. This, in turn, prevents the body from doing its regular jobs, including healing damaged cells, boosting immunity, etc.

It also means you are waking up several times through the night without realising it. And so, not only do you wake up not fresh the next morning, but the disturbed sleep further triggers other serious health problems, explains Aparajito Mukherjee, India-head of ResMed, a company that develops and sells medical equipment to tackle sleep-disordered breathing.

The co-morbidities associated with bad sleep being as grave as they are, physicians and regular people need to be more aware of sleep disorders, say experts. The classic symptoms of sleep disorders are loud habitual snoring and day time sleepiness, says Rajan. But they get missed as specialist doctors treat for diabetes, hypertension or depression, without fixing the sleep problem.

And adding to this situation are insurance companies who do not reimburse ‘sleep studies’ that are integral to diagnosing the problem, he says.

Nevertheless, the local market for sleep aid-products has developed from the days when pricing was defined depending on the clothes customers wore, quips an industry representative.

There are enough good products in the market, agrees Rajan, but companies could do a lot more on educating people on sleep disorders, he adds.

General physicians and other specialists need to be sensitised to pick up indications of sleep disorders, say experts.

After all, a good night’s sleep is the least you can expect at the end of a long day!

COMMENT NOW