Sleep and Depression FAQ’s

How Hormones Become Imbalanced?

Each person is having Suprachaismatic Nucleus or body clock center in the hypothalamus of our brain that controls how we sleep and feel.

This center creates daily signals or rhythms that govern when our hormones and neurotransmitters are released.

These daily rhythms are called circadian rhythms and they can become easily imbalanced from things like trauma, surgery, stress, age, lack of light etc.

When your body clock isn’t working right, you have a Circadian Rhythm Disorder.

How Circadian Rhythm Disorders Play a Major Role in sleep and Depression?

Due to the circadian rhythm disorder, our sleep cycle does not function properly and we feel sleepiness in the daytime and will be awake in the night time. Circadian rhythms also produce the hormones that affect our concentration, memory, and how we socialize and feel.

Circadian rhythm disorders are an underlying factor in depression as we don’t get the sleep at regular sleep hours. These common experiences suggest that interruptions in biological clocks may be both cause and consequence of disturbed moods.

Don’t some people with depression sleep too much?

Excessive sleepiness is less common in case of depression. It occurs in about 16% of patients with depression, mostly among younger adults, especially those with bipolar affective disorder (manic depression).

Excessive sleepiness can be a symptom of depression, but most patients with depression have insomnia.

How do you know if you have a Sleep depression that requires medical attention?

If you have a sleep interruption at night and daytime drowsiness, or if you have a mood disturbance that is severe enough to obstruct with your daily activities or your ability to function, then you should seek treatment.

For depression, the main symptoms are a persistently low mood and a loss of ability. If this condition continues for several weeks or more, then you should seek help.

What sort of sleep problems can affect people with depression?

People with depression can have many types of sleep problems. Usually, these involve getting less sleep than usual and include:

• Frequent waking up during night.
• Waking early in the morning and not being able to go back to sleep.
• Difficulty getting sleep at night.

What can I do about my sleep problem?

It can be extremely upsetting not being able to sleep. Here are some of the tips to overcome the sleep problem:

• Exercise: Do some physical exercise during the day. This helps to make your body more exhausted in the evening and makes it easier to get to sleep. Avoid exercise 2 to 3 hours before going to bed because it activates the body which makes it difficult to sleep
• Avoid stimulants: Avoid drinking caffeine after 6pm as it is a stimulant and can prevent sleep. Avoid alcohol before bedtime. It gives relaxation initially but it disrupts sleep in the late nights. Avoid heavy meals before bedtime. Avoid watching violent films prior to bedtime. Avoid television or radio in your bedrooms.
• Sleep hygiene: Your bedroom should be warm and comfortable. Get into a sleep routine with your sleep times. Go to sleep same time and get up at the same time each morning, even if you not had a good night’s sleep. Don’t sleep during the day, and don’t go to bed early to try and get more sleep.
• Find ways to relax: Use aroma oils on your pillow or in the bath, such as lavender, which can help relaxation. Drink herbal teas as they don’t contain caffeine. Drink warm milk as it works as sleeping tablets for many people. Use relaxation techniques such as listening to music, because music is a great relaxer.

Are there any medicines that can help?

Try to sort out the sleep problems using the above techniques rather than depending on medicines and medications. However after following all the suggestions also if the person is unable to sleep, then, a physician may recommend some medicines.

Antidepressants:

Some of the antidepressants like amitriptyline and dothiepin are themselves sedative. As a result, these antidepressants were used a great deal to help depressed patients who had noticeable sleep problems.

Most of the newer antidepressants are not sedative, though they do eventually lead to an improvement in sleep by effectively treating the underlying depressive illness.

Indeed, sleep problems are often one of the first symptoms that start getting better when a person responds to antidepressants.

A few of the newer antidepressants are sedative. These include mirtazapine and trazodone. Mirtazepine is an efficient antidepressant and the sleep it promotes is more normal that with drugs like amitriptyline.

Trazodone is an antidepressant, but many doctors feel that it is not as efficient as other antidepressants. However, it has comparatively few side effects and promotes a good quality sleep.

Because, like all antidepressants, it does not cause people to become dependent on it, trazodone is sometimes used in low doses instead of a benzodiazepine to help sleep problems, in addition to another non-sedative antidepressant. All these antidepressants should be used by consulting your physician.

Benzodiazepines, e.g. temazepam, diazepam:

Examples of Benzodiazepines are temazepam, diazepam. They are efficient and they have few side effects. However, your body becomes ‘used’ to them very quickly, so their effect starts to wear off for many people.

This can lead to take higher dose than normal. These are addictive and can be difficult to stop taking them.

You may need to take the benzodiazepines throughout this depression period of time, which is long enough for your body to become dependent on them.

New sleeping tablets have been introduced recently that are related to the enzodiazepines. These include zolpidem and zopiclone. It has been suggested that these are less likely to cause dependence than benzodiazepines, but this is far from certain and so they are also best avoided.

Consult your doctor before taking medications for depression as they may cause some side affects to some individuals which may lead to another disorder.