According to recent studies, more than 70 million Americans have been found to have a sleeping problem, and sixty percent of these people have a chronic disorder. Most cases go undiagnosed and untreated so doctors do not know the damage that these diseases can cause. There are many different sleep disorders that many people are not aware of. Some of these disorders include sleep apnea, parasomnias, circadian rhythms, restless leg syndrome, narcolepsy, and insomnia. Sleep disorders are divided into several types: difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep (insomnia), excessive daytime sleepiness (hypersomnia), abnormal timing of sleep wake cycles (circadian rhythm disorder), and abnormal stages of sleep (parasomnia). Sleep Apnea is a sleeping disorder where something will usually get in the way of breathing while you are asleep.
The throat and tongue muscles relax during sleep and can sometimes block the airway, making it difficult to breathe. The small fleshy tissue at the back of your throat can also block your airway. The air that is already inside of your body has no way of getting out and the fresh air that the body needs cannot enter. Eventually the brain will send an emergency alert for breath, causing you to wake up. Causes of sleep apnea are obesity, physical abnormalities, genetic factors, drugs, gender, snoring, sleep deprivation, and other medical disorders.
Sleep Apnea occurs in all age groups and both sexes but is more common in men and possibly young African Americans. Parasomnias are very common in young children and do not usually indicate significant psychiatric or psychological problems. The term parasomnia refers to a wide variety of sleep related disruptions. The most common type of parasomnias is disorders of arousal, which include confusion, sleepwalking, and sleep terrors. The arousal’s occur when the person is in a mixed state of being sleep and awake. Two of the most common types are nightmares and night terrors.
Other types of parasomnias are nocturnal seizures, rapid eye movement, sleep starts, rhythmic- movement disorder, sleep talking, and teeth grinding. Nightmares are often confused with the parasomnia known as night terrors. Nightmares can be about almost anything, but they always cause fear in the dreamer. Danger and embarrassment are two common themes in nightmares. Many people dream of failing in some endeavor that they care about. Nightmares occur most commonly in children between the ages of 3- 6 years old.
Their dreams usually involve some danger or threat to the child like being chased or being teased. They may also involve a monster, ghost, fierce animal, or bad individual. Causes of nightmares are developmental, genetic, psychological, and organic factors can contribute to occurrence. Treatment is usually not needed for nightmares. Most people stop having nightmares after childhood; however, they can cause severe stress in some people. Having nightmares frequently can reduce the amount of sleep a person gets and cause symptoms of sleep deprivation such as poor concentration, daytime sleepiness, and irritability.
It can eventually lead to mental illnesses such as anxiety disorder or depression. Another common parasomnia is night terror. Night terrors are episodes of extreme panic and confusion associated with vocalization, movement, and autonomic discharge. Symptoms of night terrors are sudden awakening form sleep, persistent fear or terror that occurs at night, screaming, sweating, confusion, rapid heart rate, inability to explain what happened, usually no recall of bad dreams, or nightmares. Many people see spiders, snakes, animals or people in the room, are unable to fully awake, difficult to comfort, with no memory of the event on awakening the next day. Night terrors run in families, can last 10- 20 minutes, occur in stage four of the sleep cycle, and can happen at any age from 6 months to 100 years old.
Circadian Sleep Disorders are advanced sleep phase syndrome, delayed sleep phase syndrome, jet lag, and shift work sleep disorder. Our bodies are programmed to sleep two times a day: once at night and again in the early afternoon. When it begins to get dark outside your retina sends a signal to a cluster of nerve cells in your brain that it’s time to sleep. The restless leg syndrome is characterized by uncomfortable feelings in the legs, usually in the calf area.
These feelings occur during times of rest such as when a person sits for an extended period of time or during sleep. Many people describe the feeling in their legs as a crawling sensation, like an electric current, an itching sensation, aching, like worms crawling under the skin, painful or like a burning sensation. Insomnia is the continual difficulty of falling or staying asleep that affects daytime activities. It is not a disease. It is usually a symptom of another problem. Insomnia is more common in older adults.
There are two types of insomnia. First there is primary insomnia, which is a chronic condition with little apparent association with stress or a medical problem. The most common form of primary insomnia is psycho physiological insomnia. Transient insomnia lasts for a few days to a few weeks, and transient insomnia that comes and goes is called intermittent insomnia. Narcolepsy is a sleeping disorder characterized by periods of irresistible sleepiness. Theses ” sleep attacks” happen without warning and can occur even after a good night’s rest.
They normally lasts about 20 minutes. After waking up the person feels refreshed, only to feel sleepy again a few hours later. Narcolepsy usually occurs in teenagers and young adults. It is a lifelong condition, but people can manage it and continue to be productive. There are no known medical consequences of this disorder, but it can cause traffic accidents and can affect a person’s social and professional life.