Struggling to sleep? It may be worth going through a sleep study

NOVI, Mich. (FOX 2) - If you're struggling to get sleep, at what point do you need to go through a sleep study? And what's that like?

On a recent visit to the Henry Ford Sleep Disorders Center in Novi, we learned what it's like to go through a sleep study. 

But first to answer the question, who needs a sleep study?  

"There are multipile reasons why somebody would be sent to a sleep clinic. Either they're excessively sleepy during the day or they have poor sleep at night, or there's something happening at night which is disrupting their sleep at they may not be aware of it," says Dr. Meeta Singh. "Like for example snoring, or some people make strange noises, they may have strange behaviors, and then often their bed partners need to come to sleep clinic."

In some cases a home sleep test can help evaluate certain mild sleep issues. But if you're really struggling the doctor might want you in the lab. This is where the experts can really analyze what's going wrong. 

"When you come to sleep lab basically is what happens is we want to evaluate your sleep," Dr. Singh says. "So we put leads, they're like little sticky wires, on your head to measure brain waves because that's how we tell what stage of sleep you're in. We put them around your eyes, because eye movements are important; we have something along your nose to measure your breathing in and out; bands go around your chest and stomach. We put you in a dark room. There's an infrared camera watching you and a mic recording your snoring, and basically there's always a sleep tech. So this is a trained individual who's watching you sleep."

And once you crawl into bed with all your wires, the goal is the duplicate your home bedtime behaviors and learn from it. 

"We want you to sleep 8 hours so we try to align your lab with your sleep time to your normal sleep time," Dr. Singh says. 

The doctor reminds us we need on average from 7 to 9 hours of sleep every night. If you're not getting it, it can impact your weight, your mental clairty, you ability to foucus you risk for heart disease diabetes and a lot of other issues.