#55 - Are You Sleepy or Are You Fatigued?: I'm So Tired

One of the biggest misunderstandings in medicine is the differences between sleepiness and fatigue. Add to this poorly defined terms like "tired" and "exhausted," and you have the makings for not only utter confusion, but also the basis for misdiagnoses and treatments that miss the mark completely. In this episode we will:

• Provide a research background examining the confusion between the terms sleepy and fatigued
• Attempt to define sleepiness and fatigue and provide a physiological and behavioral foundation for their characterizations
• Evaluate the misuse of the term fatigue in literature regarding excessive daytime sleepiness
• Use research to characterize the unique intermediate positioning of the word "tired" in scientific explorations of sleepiness and fatigue
• Learn how the lack of a "gold standard" for fatigue evaluation has contributed to the problem
• Revisit the Epworth Sleepiness Scale as the de facto standard for quantification of sleepiness and its intrinsic shortcomings
• Discuss ways in which failure to properly characterize sleepiness or fatigue can lead to diagnostic and treatment delays and error
• Expand upon the multitude of fatigue causes and how primary medicine often stops far short of an exhaustive search for an underlying cause of an individual's fatigue
• Link specific sleep and psychological factors to elements of sleepiness and fatigue

Produced by: Maeve Winter

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Thanks for listening and sleep well!