Hypersomnolence is a neurological sleep disorder that causes excessive sleepiness during the day and can be permanent or temporary. It can be caused by genetics, other health conditions, or have no known cause. Treatment depends on the underlying cause, and it differs from other sleep disorders such as insomnia or narcolepsy.
People who suffer from hypersomnolence sleep too much at night, take long naps during the day, and generally feel sleepy and distracted when awake. This serious neurological sleep disorder can be permanent or temporary, but is often misdiagnosed. Hypersomnolence can be related to a genetic predisposition, caused by another health condition, or idiopathic, meaning it has no known cause.
If you suffer from hypersomnolence, you need much more sleep than normal people. You may get more than 10 hours of sleep each night, but you still need extended naps that last more than an hour during the day. Attempts to wake you up, such as phone calls or alarm clocks, are usually ineffective. Even with this much of your life spent sleeping, you won’t feel refreshed or refreshed. Instead, your thinking and motor coordination may be clumsy, cloudy, or confused. If you experience these symptoms, make sure you get a proper diagnosis from your general practitioner or sleep expert.
When your body is recovering from a grueling condition, such as an infection, surgery, or mononucleosis, you can expect some degree of hypersomnolence as you fully recover. Other known causes include sleep apnea and periodic leg movement. During the night, these conditions create frequent disturbances in regular, restorative sleep without fully waking you up. Therefore, during the day you may crave naps to compensate for poor rest. A buildup of magnesium, a mineral that some people take as a vitamin supplement, has been known to cause hypersomnolence. Depression has also been associated with daytime sluggishness.
Temporary hypersomnolence can usually be treated by addressing the underlying cause, such as sleep apnea or infection, until you can depend on a restful night’s sleep. Periodic hypersomnolence, called Kleine-Levin syndrome, means that you go through periods of normal sleep followed by excessive sleep. While it could be genetic, at this point doctors can only treat symptoms by prescribing stimulants to keep you awake and alert during the day.
Hypersomnolence differs somewhat from other sleep disorders, such as insomnia or narcolepsy, but people often confuse them. Insomnia, or the inability to sleep through the night, could create excessive exhaustion which in turn causes hypersomnolence. This variety may only be temporary. Narcolepsy is closely related to hypersomnolence, meaning both cause you to fall asleep in the middle of the day. Narcoleptics experience REM sleep (which involves dreaming), while sleep with hypersomnolence is non-REM sleep.
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