Are You Asking What Time Did Your Patients Go to Bed?: Getting the Short Sleep Onset Latency

• Main Authors: Seockhoon Chung, Soyoung Youn, Changnam Kim
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Korean Society of Sleep Medicine 2018-06-01
• Series: Sleep Medicine Research
• Subjects: Hypnotics; Sleep latency; Insomnia; Sleep
• Online Access: http://www.sleepmedres.org/upload/pdf/smr-2018-00150.pdf
• ISSN: 2093-9175; 2233-8853

A few patients diagnosed with insomnia attempt going to bed earlier to obtain adequate sleep and fall asleep less than 30 min, although they often complain about their inability to fall asleep easily. The aim of this study was to explore the association between short sleep latency and patients’ sleepwake pattern. All the 99 patients with primary insomnia who were under treatment with benzodiazepine or non-benzodiazepine gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) agonists as sleeping pills were selected. The time to take hypnotics, bedtime, sleep onset, and wake-up times were determined from medical records. Subjects who showed sleep latency of less than 30 min (SL ≤ 30, n = 56) were treated with hypnotics (10:46 pm) before going to bed (11:00 pm) later compared with subjects with sleep latency greater than 30 min (SL > 30 min, n = 43, hypnotic ingestion time, 9:46 pm; bedtime 10:10 pm). Duration from wake-up time to bedtime (WTB) was significantly longer in SL ≤ 30 group (16.5 ± 1.1 h) compared to SL > 30 group (15.8 ± 1.5 h). Long sleep latency was significantly correlated with old age, earlier ingestion of sleeping pills, earlier bedtime, and short duration of WTB (all, p < 0.01). Early bed time in the evening was not associated with short sleep latency. Patients with insomnia may find that delayed bedtime may promote faster sleep.