A sleep study, also called a polysomnogram (PSG), is a non-invasive study conducted at a sleep center. Sleep specialists monitor your sleeping, via PSG equipment ,in order to assess what kind of sleep quality you are getting and, where applicable, any sleep disorders you may be dealing with.
During a sleep study, many aspects of your sleep will be evaluated and monitored, such as:
Results from your sleep study are analyzed by sleep physicians and sent to your healthcare practitioner to review with you.
For most people, a sleep study is an critical part of getting a diagnosis for a sleep disorder. The first step is usually that you and/or your healthcare practitioner will notice red flags for sleep disorders, which often are a result of sleep deprivation or other symptoms of specific sleep disorders.
You can then contact us and we can walk you through the process to get started, or you can consult healthcare practitioner, in which case they will then likely seek a diagnosis before moving forward with treatment options, giving you a referral to our sleep center for a sleep study.
After the sleep study, your healthcare practitioner will have a much better idea of what treatment to pursue depending on the results from the study.
Sleep studies are as non-invasive as possible. The most uncomfortable part for most people should be being attached to sleep monitoring equipment, but most people do not find this to be uncomfortable, at least not enough to prevent them from getting good sleep.
Beyond this, sleep studies are designed to be as comfortable than your own sleeping environment:
Sleep centers have many decades of experience creating comfortable sleep environments, using comfortable and proven techniques.
This is a common question people have, but it is almost never a problem. The reality is that you, like everyone else, will likely have little to no more difficulty falling asleep during a sleep study than at home.
Of course, sleep centers are also prepared with other options to help you begin sleeping on the slim chance that you are having difficulty. You can easily do research on online forums and you will see that, while people don't always "love" their sleep study, difficulties falling asleep isn't a common issue.
That being said, there are certainly things you can do to prepare for your sleep evaluation and make yourself as comfortable as possible.
It's fairly straightforward and, outside of missing your morning cup of coffee or nightcap before bed, preparing for your sleep study will ideally be "business as usual" for you.
If you live in Alaska and need a sleep study, or think that a sleep study may help you identify existing sleep conditions, please feel free to contact us to see how to start the process with getting a sleep evaluation:
The best thing you can do to be more comfortable during your sleep study is to simply pretend you are going to spend the night at a spa (remember, you have your own private room at the sleep center):
In other words, you can do most anything that you might normally do at home to be comfortable for sleep.