Sleep Doctor Questions and Answers

If you have a primary care physician, ask him or her about any sleep problems you’re having. You will likely be referred to a sleep doctor for further examination and testing. You may need a referral to a specialist depending on your particular medical insurance requirements, but you can certainly contact a sleep center like ours and make any kind of inquiry with us.

A primary care physician can do only so much to treat sleep problems, but a sleep doctor can do a great deal. This kind of professional understands sleep problems and can help identify the underlying cause and best treatment option.
Go see a sleep doctor if you suspect you may have a sleep problem so you can get on the right path to feeling well again.

You should go see a sleep doctor if you aren’t sleeping well or if you’re experiencing the effects of poor sleep. Such effects and some indications you’re not sleeping well are fatigue during the day, lack of energy and focus, difficulty falling or staying asleep, unusual breathing patterns and movement during sleep, or changes to your sleep/wake schedule. Unfortunately, these symptoms can worsen over time and some patients have accepted them as simply “getting older,” and do not realize that they can feel better.

Sometimes it can be hard to tell whether you have a problem with sleep. A problem like sleep apnea may be identified by a sleep partner who notices that you snore, gasp for air, or even stop breathing in your sleep. If you do not have a sleep partner to point these things out, a simple screening tool like the Epworth Sleepiness Scale can be used to gauge your daytime tiredness.

You definitely should visit a sleep doctor if you suspect you have a sleep problem like sleep apnea which, if left untreated, can lead to severe and even fatal health conditions. A sleep doctor can easily identify and address sleep problems.

At a sleep clinic like Koala® Center For Sleep & TMJ Disorders, a sleep doctor can identify then treat a sleep problem as well as its cause. To identify a problem and its possible cause, a sleep doctor might conduct a sleep study or provide certain tests like a blood test, and to treat a problem and its cause, sleep medicine may be provided, like a medication or a kind of therapy.

Here at Koala® Center For Sleep & TMJ Disorders, we practice dental sleep medicine. Dental sleep medicine with oral appliance therapy can be especially effective at treating many cases of sleep apnea, and oral appliance therapy is a proven treatment recommended by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

When you go see a sleep doctor, ask about your symptoms, their possible causes, if you should have a sleep study done, how the doctor can help you, and what your treatment options are.

Koala® Center For Sleep & TMJ Disorders likely has a sleep clinic with a sleep doctor near you. We have locations all throughout Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Texas, and Wisconsin, so please see our Locations page for the location nearest you if you’d like further information or a consultation with us! During a consultation, we’ll answer any other questions you have about sleep doctors and how one can help you.

We hope you found this Q&A informative and we look forward to seeing you soon here at Koala® Center For Sleep & TMJ Disorders!