Why a person sleeps a lot and does not get enough sleep depends on various factors. First of all, you should pay attention to the state of the nervous system and physical activity during the day. When overtired, insomnia or prolonged sleep appears. In addition, people do not fully rest due to poor circulation, hormonal imbalance, and other pathologies.
Do you sleep a lot? Let's look at the reasons for long sleep
Daily sleep of more than 10 hours a day is considered a violation, especially if after it a person feels exhausted. This disorder is called hypersomnia , but many patients do not associate long sleep with any illness. However, if a long sleep does not end in morning fatigue, a 10-hour stay in bed is not a serious pathology.
A diagnosis prescribed by a somnologist will help you find out whether prolonged sleep is a disorder.
Prolonged sleep may be due to improper brain function. Therefore, the examination plan should include diagnostics of the functions of the central nervous system.
Why do people sleep a lot day and night?
The main reasons for prolonged sleep are:
- Stress;
- Excessive physical activity;
- Emotional exhaustion;
- Diseases of the heart and blood vessels;
- Injuries, tumors and diseases of the brain;
- Regular lack of sleep;
- Night insomnia;
- Depression;
- Elderly age;
- Pregnancy;
- Taking pharmacological drugs that affect brain function;
- Mental illnesses.
The diagnosis of “hypersomnia” is made if at least one of the listed reasons is present.
What to do?
Why did I start sleeping a lot? What is the problem? What could it be? If a person previously adhered to the regime and got enough sleep, but over time he began to sleep longer and at the same time feel worse, you should not ignore the situation.
A set of targeted measures will help prevent health problems and avoid complications:
- Mode optimization. It is worth adjusting your activity level to suit your individual needs.
People who work in an office, move little and avoid outdoor activities need to introduce sports into their lives.And for those who do not rest at all during the day and do physical labor, it is better to reconsider their schedule, change jobs, or, if possible, give up some types of workload. You will also have to adjust your diet, giving up unhealthy foods in favor of healthy foods. And of course, don’t forget about vitamins (especially in the autumn and spring).
Walks in the open air. Residents of megacities spend most of their lives indoors, thereby provoking oxygen starvation. It is enough to walk for 30-40 minutes in the “green zone” to ensure normal gas exchange in the body. Dealing with stress. The method must be selected individually. This could be visiting a psychologist, taking sedatives, meditation, yoga, etc. The most important thing is to get rid of the increased level of anxiety, irritability and related experiences.
Full examination in the hospital. A general examination and consultation with specialized specialists will help stop the development of any pathologies at an early stage, if the cause of drowsiness is the disease.
How does hypersomnia manifest itself?
You should think about the presence of pathology if the daily sleep duration exceeds 10 hours a day . In this case, a special sign of the disease is fatigue, which occurs immediately after waking up. A person cannot wake up completely, which is why he sets several alarm clocks. However, he often does not hear them or simply postpones getting up.
Constant drowsiness impairs alertness and reduces reaction speed.
If a person sleeps a lot, they may also experience headaches, dizziness, and muscle weakness .
Daytime sleepiness may be inconsistent. Therefore, it is difficult to make a correct diagnosis in this case. If drowsiness is periodic, the presence of a disorder should be judged by other symptoms. For example, it becomes difficult for a person with this problem to express his thoughts, which is why from the outside he may look like an insecure person. Well, this state of affairs leads to difficulties in relationships with people.
When answering the question why a person sleeps a lot, hypersomnia is not always meant. Sometimes prolonged sleep indicates a disease called narcolepsy . This pathology is characterized by sudden attacks of irresistible drowsiness. Moreover, from the outside it may look like fainting, but in this situation the brain simply “turns off” and the person suddenly falls asleep. Narcolepsy often manifests itself on public transport, while studying, and in other cases when a person’s attention is not occupied with anything.
Narcolepsy is especially dangerous in drivers. After all, having fallen asleep while driving during another attack, a person can easily get into an accident , harming himself and others.
Drowsiness: main causes
There are several factors influencing the occurrence of a condition where you constantly want to sleep.
Psychological
Hypersomnia can be caused by depression. This is a severe mental pathology in which the individual lacks any desires and interests. A person does not see prospects and incentives for himself, he is incapable of activity, and neglects to perform basic everyday activities. Fatigue and weakness that accompany depression lead to the fact that most of the time a person wants to sleep.
It also happens that a person has a complex unsolved problem. At the first stage, he experiences an uplift and is determined to overcome it. But in situations where it is not possible to achieve results, apathy and despondency come. By sleep, a person closes himself off from the outside world and the problems that have piled up.
Physiological
A constant desire to sleep can be caused by diseases that lead to insufficient oxygen supply to the brain: impaired blood pressure (in both directions), ischemia, pulmonary and bronchial diseases, atherosclerosis, heart attack.
For example, with atherosclerosis, blood vessels become clogged with lipids that interfere with cerebral circulation. As a result, a person constantly wants to sleep.
The scourge of our time is a disease such as osteochondrosis. It is characterized, among other things, by spasm of the cervical arteries, which leads to a deficiency of oxygen in the brain. It is difficult for a person to concentrate on doing work and other daily activities.
Difficulty in the blood supply to the brain also occurs as a result of diseases such as anemia and hemoglobin deficiency. People with such diagnoses want to sleep during the day, they feel weak and lack energy.
A similar condition is observed with vitamin deficiency and dehydration. In such cases, drowsiness is caused by a lack of required substances in the human body.
A constant desire to sleep can be a consequence of psychopathologies: schizophrenia, psychoses of various etiologies, epilepsy.
Hypersomnia can result from taking a number of medications, abuse of alcohol and other illegal substances.
Pathological
Narcolepsy is a pathological form of daytime sleepiness. This is a disease in which a person is physically unable to control their sleep. Falling asleep occurs suddenly, at any time and anywhere. A person not only wants to sleep, he literally falls asleep on the go.
Most often, young men - from 15 to 30 years old - are susceptible to narcolepsy, but there is no guarantee that the disease will develop at a later age. About 30 out of 100,000 people suffer from the disease.
The cause of the disease is traditionally considered to be a deficiency of hypocretin, a substance responsible for sleep. However, the disease has not been fully studied; a genetic version of its origin is also being considered.
Narcolepsy is accompanied by an immediate loss of muscle tone: the person literally sleeps and is unable to control his body. Nacrolepsy is characterized by hallucinations, auditory and auditory, which appear both before falling asleep and at the moment of awakening.
To date, it is impossible to completely cure nacrolepsy. Doctors can only alleviate the patient's condition by eliminating or minimizing symptoms so that the person can lead an acceptable lifestyle.
If a person sleeps a lot, what diseases can this lead to?
In general, health problems are more often caused by lack of sleep. However, long sleep is also associated with some serious diseases. Let's sort them out.
- Cardiovascular pathologies . First of all, oversleeping leads to disruption of the heart, which is often accompanied by an increase in blood pressure. Because of this, a person who sleeps for a long time increases the risk of heart attack and stroke - the leading causes of death in the world.
- Depression . Extending your sleep time can have a negative impact on your quality of life. With hypersomnia, a person does not have time to go about his business due to constant drowsiness and prolonged sleep.
- Diabetes mellitus type 2 . As sleep time increases, the body's tissue sensitivity to insulin, the hormone that regulates sugar levels, decreases. This is why people who sleep 10-12 hours are more likely to develop diabetes.
- Migraine . Prolonged sleep leads to frequent headaches that occur after getting up.
Hypersomnia, coupled with one or more of the above diseases, significantly worsens a person’s psychological mood. Therefore, treatment of the disease should not be shelved. You need to contact a specialist as soon as possible.
What not to do if you feel very sleepy
Many of us, in the absence of time to visit hospitals, independently purchase medicines, which are presented in huge quantities and are sold without prescriptions. You can't do this!
We talked about the fact that there are a lot of reasons why you want to sleep and they lie in different areas. Uncontrolled use of drugs can only aggravate the course of pathologies and will not bring the desired result. The composition of sleeping pills includes mainly sedatives, i.e. sedative components. But they cannot help, for example, with circulatory problems. You will be able to fall asleep at night, but during the day you will be even more sleepy.
It is widespread among people who want to sleep during the day to take drugs that stimulate the nervous system: from banal coffee to energy drinks. Indeed, caffeine will help you cheer up for a short time, but it is not able to solve the problem of sleep disturbance.
Energy drinks have negative effects on the heart and liver, and they are also addictive. The condition can only get worse.
How to improve sleep if you sleep too much
When you visit a doctor, you and a specialist should find out the main reason for prolonged sleep. The doctor will ask you several questions to help make a preliminary diagnosis. However, only diagnostic measures can accurately determine hypersomnia.
If prolonged sleep is associated with diseases of the nervous or cardiovascular systems, first you need to treat them. After all, after eliminating the main causes of hypersomnia, the duration of sleep itself will most likely normalize.
Above all, it is important to maintain proper sleep hygiene. And to do this you need to follow the recommendations presented below.
Rules for good sleep
- Go to bed and wake up at the same time . If you are used to going to bed at 11 pm and getting up at 7 am, stick to this routine every day, even on weekends. This is necessary for the body to develop the habit of waking up and preparing for sleep at certain hours.
- Get up immediately after the first alarm rings . To restore a healthy sleep pattern, forget about the “snooze” button on your smartphone alarm clock. By postponing getting up for 5-10 minutes, the brain goes back to sleep, after which it is much more difficult to get out of bed. To make getting up in the morning easier, use special apps for your smartphone. For example, software alarm clocks are great, to turn them off you need to solve an arithmetic problem or take a photo of a QR code, say, in the bathroom.
- Take a contrast shower in the morning . Getting under cold water after getting up seems like a real execution for the body. However, a drastic measure will help you recover faster after a long sleep. Let us immediately make a reservation that contrast showers can be taken by healthy people without problems with the heart and blood vessels.
- Do exercises . Swinging your arms and legs after waking up will improve blood flow throughout your body. Thanks to this, you can wake up quickly.
- Take vitamin-mineral complexes . It is believed that vitamins help fight daytime sleepiness and normalize sleep quality. However, in practice, everything depends on the specific vitamins and their dosages.
- Eat at least 5 vegetables and fruits daily . Many plant foods contain enough vitamins and minerals that they can be used instead of vitamin supplements to improve sleep.
- Ventilate your bedroom before going to bed . Fresh air contains more oxygen, which the brain needs for good rest.
- Finish physical activity at least 2 hours before bedtime . During active muscle work, adrenaline is released into the blood, a stress hormone that increases the heart rate. In this case, the effect of the hormone completely disappears only 2 hours after completion of the exercise.
Read more about ways to normalize sleep here.
Treatment of hypersomnia with medications
Sleep aids should not be taken without a doctor's prescription. Firstly, their action will most likely eliminate the symptoms and will not affect the very cause of prolonged sleep. Secondly, it is difficult to choose the right drug to normalize sleep on your own, since pharmacies mainly sell sleeping pills that increase the time of night rest or improve falling asleep. Thus, if you want to get rid of hypersomnia with medication, visit a general practitioner or a sleep specialist.
Overcoming restless sleep syndrome: treatment and prevention
If the time of night rest is constantly increasing and is already ten, or even twelve hours, but it does not bring relief, then you should try to find out the cause of the violation and first eliminate it yourself. To do this you need to do the following:
- adjust your diet by enriching your diet with healthy dishes;
- to refuse from bad habits;
- periodically take vitamin complexes;
- increase physical activity;
- undergo examination and treat existing diseases;
- create comfortable sleeping conditions;
- start practicing various meditations and relaxation techniques;
- do what you love – singing, sewing, drawing, embroidery, knitting.
Characteristic manifestations of lack of sleep
To avoid consequences, you need to notice the symptoms of lack of sleep in time. Characteristic manifestations are:
- decreased energy levels, work capacity and concentration;
- weakness;
- slow reactions, memory loss;
- the appearance of hallucinations;
- a desire to sleep that remains throughout the day;
- paleness of the facial skin, the appearance of dark circles under the eyes, excessive tearing;
- headache;
- sudden changes in pressure.
With regular lack of sleep, a person becomes irritable, nervous, constantly feels oppressed and depressed, and quickly gets tired.
Restless legs syndrome
Unpleasant sensations in the legs, accompanied by sudden involuntary movements, often interfere with quality and healthy sleep. This problem is called restless legs syndrome. It consists of the following manifestations:
- a feeling of discomfort in the legs: burning, tingling, goosebumps, tingling, twitching - all this interferes with a good sleep;
- constant need to move your legs: a person does not do this on purpose in order to alleviate his condition a little;
- from those suffering from this problem you can hear the phrase “when I fall asleep, my legs move”: this is how the syndrome is characterized, because it occurs in the first half of the night.
The reasons for this phenomenon often lie in depressive states: a person constantly wants to run, move, he cannot calm down. If doctors do not find a mental basis for this, then you should reconsider your thoughts before going to bed. In order for all organs and brain to sleep and rest, do not think about bad things before going to bed. Relax, throw out all your thoughts, because after 8-12 hours of sleep, your head is much easier to work and think in the morning.
