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(08) 6110 0570admin@pdchealthhub.com.auExcessive daytime sleepiness means you feel the urge to sleep through the day, day after day, and you may doze off during a conversation, a meal or a train ride. It is a symptom, not a diagnosis.
Feeling sleepy through the day, day after day, is excessive daytime sleepiness. Sleepiness is the urge or need to fall asleep, and when it is excessive you may doze off during a conversation, a meal, a film or a train ride.1 Sleepiness may or may not come with fatigue.1 It is a symptom rather than a diagnosis, so the useful question is what is causing it: too little sleep, poor quality sleep, a sleep disorder, a medicine or another health problem.1
The common causes are not allowing enough time for sleep, poor quality sleep from late caffeine, nicotine, long daytime naps or insomnia, and shift work, which puts your sleep out of step with your body clock.1,3 Obstructive sleep apnoea is a frequent cause: the airway narrows during sleep and breaks it into fragments, and snoring, restlessness or breathing pauses noticed by a bed partner are the warning signs.1,4 Sleeping tablets can leave you groggy or tired the next day.5 Heart and lung conditions, diabetes, low iron, an underactive thyroid, pain, anxiety, depression and narcolepsy also cause it.1
Your GP is the place to start, and the cause is often clear from the history alone. Assessment may include questions about your sleep and daily function, the Epworth Sleepiness Scale as a screening tool and, if a sleep disorder is suspected, referral to a sleep specialist for an overnight sleep study.1 Driving is the urgent part. Sleepiness badly impairs driving, and if your driving is likely to be affected you have a legal obligation to notify the driver licensing authority.2,6,7 PDC clinicians do not diagnose sleep disorders, do not order sleep studies and do not assess fitness to drive.
PHOTO NEEDED · Add a Hero Image to this condition in the CMS: a PDC clinician with a client, natural light, no identifiable health information on screen
Symptoms are a guide, not a diagnosis. Your GP confirms the diagnosis; our team helps you manage it day to day.
The teams and services that most often support people with this condition. They work from one shared plan, and one GP referral reaches all of them.
This page follows Australian guidance: Sleep Health Foundation fact sheets on excessive daytime sleepiness, drowsy driving, shift work and obstructive sleep apnoea, and Healthdirect on the safe use of sleeping pills. The driving and licensing content follows Austroads Assessing Fitness to Drive (6th edition, 2022) and the WA Department of Transport.
Time in bed is not the same as sleep. You can spend long enough in bed and still sleep poorly, and obstructive sleep apnoea is a common reason because it breaks sleep into fragments without waking you properly. Late caffeine or nicotine, long daytime naps, insomnia and pain all do the same thing. Your GP can sort out which it is, sometimes from the history alone.
No. It is a symptom, and the point of seeing someone about it is to find the cause. That might be the amount of sleep you get, the quality of it, a sleep disorder such as sleep apnoea or narcolepsy, a medicine, or a condition like diabetes, low iron or an underactive thyroid. The cause decides the treatment, which is why guessing at it rarely works.
They can. Sleeping tablets in particular can leave you groggy, unsteady and tired the next day, which raises the risk of accidents and falls, and many other prescription and over the counter medicines disturb sleep. Our pharmacists can talk you through what you are taking, including things you have bought yourself, and write down what to ask your GP. Do not stop a prescribed medicine on your own.
If your driving is likely to be affected, yes. Australian driving standards say drivers should be advised of their legal obligation to notify the driver licensing authority, and in Western Australia the Department of Transport states that drivers are required by law to report a long term condition likely to impair driving, naming sleep apnoea as an example of a reportable sleep disorder. Reporting usually leads to a licence condition, a medical assessment or no action rather than the loss of a licence, and for heavy vehicle, bus, taxi and dangerous goods licences the input has to come from a specialist in sleep disorders. PDC does not do fitness to drive assessments.
Shift workers sleep less on average than people working regular daytime hours, so protecting sleep comes first: consistent sleep and wake times, a dark, quiet, cool bedroom, and no caffeine, alcohol or cigarettes before bed. Sleep shortly before a shift, or take a short nap of about 15 minutes in a break. If you drive home after a night shift, treat drowsiness as a stop signal, not something to push through. If the tiredness persists despite all that, see your doctor.
Tell us what is going on and we will point you to the right discipline, or to more than one. Most people start with a single appointment and leave with a plan the rest of the team can see.
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