Excessive Daytime Sleepiness

Much of this is due to lifestyle issues that nibble away at the hours we should be spending asleep. But the problem is actually bigger than that. Our lifestyles in the Western world also drive us toward living in brain-states that make it difficult for us to climb down later into restful, deep sleep. Much can be done for this state of affairs in the realm of self-care. However, when the brain has gotten into bad habits over decades, the payoff for the perfunctory adoption of a self-care remedy may be modest at the outset, and not sufficient to be sustained. Neurofeedback can give the brain a strong reminder of what it is like to sleep well. Once that is in place, sound health practices are easier to maintain. So even though excessive daytime sleepiness is not an issue that calls for emergency measures, the payoff for serious attention to this issue might well be huge in terms of quality of life and function. There should also be benefits down the line in terms of longevity through improved immune system function, etc.

A variety of biofeedback techniques can be helpful here, many of them quite accessible to the home user. The case for doing Neurofeedback is strengthened if there are other issues related to brain function that could also benefit from some attention, and we find that there usually are. In doing Neurofeedback / EEG Biofeedback for a variety of conditions, we find that the quality of sleep is usually one of the first things to improve, and it does so quite irrespective of whether sleep was thought to be a problem.

Many people just accept their own sleep patterns as being normal, or at least tolerable, not realizing how much better things could be. Sleep researchers tend to see functional improvements in their patients as secondary to improvements in sleep. We who do Neurofeedback don't disagree with this, but would shift the perspective slightly: the quality of sleep is an index to the quality of self-regulation, and the latter influences both waking states and sleep. Improved self-regulation is our objective, and improved sleep is not only a consequence but also a measure of our success.