Our comprehensive sleep services encompass sleep physician consulting, sleep investigations (home sleep testing) and a full range of sleep medications such as plant medicine.
But it’s not always easy to get a good night’s sleep. Many different health conditions can make it hard to fall asleep, stay asleep or sleep long and deeply enough to feel refreshed when you wake.
You stop breathing for brief periods while you’re sleeping, which affects the oxygen levels in your body.
Signs and symptoms include heavy snoring, daytime tiredness and headaches and high blood pressure.
A very common sleep disorder that means you may struggle to fall asleep or stay asleep for long enough to wake feeling refreshed. This may be due to medical causes or to lifestyle.
A persistent exhaustion that saps your energy and limits your activities. It’s important to identify the underlying causes of fatigue, which may be a medical or psychological condition or relate to lifestyle factors such as shift work.
A strong urge to move your legs, which often kicks in just when you’re going to bed and makes it hard to settle.
Mental health conditions can worsen sleep – and poor sleep can, in turn, affect mental health.
You may grind your teeth while you sleep, leading to jaw pain and stiffness in the morning.
At any given time, around 10% of us are probably dealing with mild insomnia. Insomnia gets more common as you get older and tends to affect women more than men. If it lasts for more than 3 months and impairs your daytime functioning, then you may have chronic insomnia.
Sometimes, insomnia can be traced back to an underlying issue with your physical or mental health (such as anxiety or depression) or to your lifestyle (such as shift work, stress or alcohol consumption).
Often, these issues are interlinked – for example, living with an ongoing health condition (whether physical or mental) may complicate your life, increasing your anxiety levels and causing stress.
While more research is needed, Australian researchers have found that plant medicine may improve sleep quality among adults with insomnia. It’s one of several treatment options your doctor may consider to improve your sleep.
An investigation of your sleep struggles may include:
The right treatment for your sleep difficulties depends on their cause. It might include:
Using a CPAP machine– constinuous positive airway pressure – to keep your airways open while you sleep. This is the most common treatment for sleep apnoea.
Lullaby Health’s sleep services also include:
MBChB BSc Hons MD FRCP (UK) FRACP
Dr Dev Banerjee is a specialist sleep physician with over 20 years’ experience, including roles as:
He is very aware of the influence of conditions such as PTSD on sleep, having worked with first responders for over a decade. He is able to prescribe a range of treatments for sleep disorders, including plant medicine.
Just like any other medication, plant medicine products can have side effects that affect people differently. These may include fatigue and sedation, vertigo, nausea and vomiting, fever, confusion, appetite increase or decrease, dry mouth and cognitive distortion (hallucinations and untrue thoughts).
Generally, people with an active or previous psychotic or active mood or anxiety disorder, women who are pregnant, planning to become pregnant or breastfeeding and people with unstable cardiovascular disease are generally not recommended to begin treatment with plant medicine.
If taking cannabinoid therapy (CBD with THC), you should not drive or operate heavy machinery if tired or sleepy.
There is no legal issue regarding purified CBD only products. If taking THC during the day you may become impaired and therefore should not drive. The relationship between THC and impairment is complex.
Often detecting cannabis impairment depends on things such as:
– Dose
– Genetics
– Metabolism
– Tolerance to THC
– Length of treatment
– Type of medicinal cannabis product
– Type and sensitivity of drug test
Unlike alcohol, it’s not known what dose of THC causes impairment. It’s different between most people.
It is illegal to drive with THC present in your body system.
Your doctor and you will need to follow a special process to give you access to plant medicine. Generally, the following steps are involved:
Sleep Tests at many Sleep Clinics can cost upwards of $400.
At Lullaby Health, if you meet the following criteria, you are eligible for a Bulk-Billed (no cost) Sleep Test.
To be eligible for a Bulk-Billed sleep test, you must be:
The test can also be paid for privately, or for people who are not eligible to claim a Medicare Bulk Billed test (e.g 14 years and over or already had a medicare sleep test within the last 12 months).
Tests can be picked up from our Clinics, or we can arrange for the test to be sent to your home or work.
(If you like to have your sleep test posted to you, there is an administration and postage fee does apply approx $99. This covers postage to you and return to us, and insurance during postage.)
As part of the Medicare Bulk Billed eligible critera, a referral from medical healthcare professional is required. Such as your primary doctor (GP/Family Doctor), Dentist or Specialist Doctor (e.g. Cardiologist, ENT, Psychiatrist, etc.)
Please note referrals from Dietitians, Chiropractors, Psychologist are not recognised by Medicare, and you will need to visit with your primary doctor (GP/Family Doctor)
Electrodes on wires are attached with paste to your head and body—the process is completely painless—to monitor your brain waves, rapid eye movements, oxygen levels, breathing patterns, respiratory efforts, snoring, heart rate, and more.
Our goal is to collect the best data we can about you while you sleep. To do this, we will want to see you sleep in your usual positions.
If your doctor suggests you undergo a sleep test (or as it is called a polysomnography), you may be wondering what is involved in this test and what to expect. Sleep tests help doctors diagnose sleep disorders such as sleep apnea, periodic limb movement disorder, narcolepsy, restless legs syndrome, insomnia, and nighttime behaviors like sleepwalking and REM sleep behavior disorder. Often these disorders cannot be identified with a normal office visit—your doctor needs to gather more conclusive evidence while you’re asleep.
A sleep test is a non-invasive, overnight exam that allows doctors to monitor you while you sleep to see what’s happening in your brain and body. For this test, you take a kit home and set up the Sleep test leads on you and sleep in the comfort of your own bed.
The data from your sleep test will usually be taken by a technologist, and later evaluated by your doctor. This may take up to two weeks, when you’ll schedule a follow up to discuss the results.
Disclaimer
Lullaby Health is not promoting the use of medical cannabis. Medical cannabis does affect every person differently, due to factors such as size, weight, health, dosage, tolerance, and age. Medical cannabis might not work for you, and you might experience side effects. Information provided by Lullaby Health is for educational and informational purposes only. For medical advice, please refer to your doctor. Medical cannabis in Australia is regulated by the Therapeutic Goods Administration and details about cannabis as a scheduled drug can be found on their website.
Servicing patients Australia wide via Telehealth.
Head office:
Erina Fair Shopping Centre,
Shop 2, Terrigal Drive,
Erina NSW, Australia 2250
