ARLINGTON, Va – Doctors and experts at the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center want health care providers to try treating sleep disorders caused by traumatic brain injury with some common sense – a quiet bedroom, staying away from coffee at bedtime. The recommendations mark a shift away from relying solely on medication.
In a briefing Wednesday, Dr. Therese West recommended that healthcare providers offer behavioral therapy before prescribing benzodiazepines, antihistamines and other insomnia medicines. West is a subject matter expert at the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center, an arm of the U.S. Military Health System created in 1992.
“We want to make sure that providers are implementing the first line treatments of the stimulus control and sleep hygiene prior to medication,” West said. Stimulus control includes removing electronics from the bedroom and creating a proper sleep environment. Sleep hygiene practices include avoiding caffeine and exercising regularly.
According to the brain injury center, more than 300,000 service members have endured traumatic brain injuries since 2000. Among them, sleep disorders are the second most frequent complaint after headaches, West said.
Recommendations made public Wednesday were the result of research conducted by military personnel, civilians, and academic experts after frequent complaints by service members about sleep disturbances.
Capt. Cynthia Spells, director of Clinical Affairs for the brain injury center, works closely with service members and veterans to identify critical health issues and develop solutions.
At the Fort Stewart Army base in Georgia, her post before coming to the brain injury center, Spells said “our folks were coming back with significant injuries including TBI. The most common reports that we would get from service members as well as from their family members is that they are just not the same.”
The research shows that improper sleep could exacerbate Traumatic Brain Injury symptoms and prevent proper rehabilitation. Spells said the recommendations to treat sleep disturbances and TBI are not exclusively for service members. Experts hope health care providers will apply these treatment methods universally.
“All of us tend to take sleep for granted and how important it really is to our day-to-day functioning and our productivity until we don’t have access to it, or not enough,” Spells said.
The brain injury center plans to collaborate with the military as well as the offices of the surgeon general to incorporate the recommendations into the healthcare system.
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