Sleep Problems : Types and Causes The very process of aging brings with it a series of sleep problems. Similarly, the transition period between wakefulness and sleep or vice-versa also has its share of abnormalities such as Parasomnias which are caused by a number of reasons. These include: drastic and sudden changes in lifestyles or in medication intake or even due to pathological imbalances that the patient may be suffering from as he continues to age. Parasomnias, incidentally, are also seen in children and include sleep walking, rapid eye movement disorder, a particular psychosis where the victim enacts a dream in his sleep through violent arm and leg movement. Insomnia is the most common among slaapproblemen(sleep problems), where the patient does not get enough sleep and the sleep-wake transition during the sleeping period takes place all too often. The causes are: excessive smoking or alcohol intake, anxiety, depression or post-surgical pain which may aggravate a patient’s condition more if not detected and treated early. The other more commonly seen sleep problems include: Sleep apnea, Pickwickian Syndrome, narcolepsy, obstructive sleep apnea, shift work sleep disorder, primary restless leg syndrome, intrinsic and extrinsic sleep disorders, psychophysiological sleep disorder, psycho-reactive insomnia and endogenous and secondary insomnia, to name a few.
While abnormal behavior such as perpetual irritability and anxiety are associated with all sleep problems, irregular overgang(transition) also occurs in all cases of sleep disorders. A patient may be unable to stay awake during daytime complaining of lethargy and sleepiness or may even have a sleep rhythm problem wherein his sleep schedule varies on a daily basis. Irregular transition in the sleep-wake period also gives rise to abnormal behavior when a patient is sleeping such as jerky arm and leg movements made involuntarily. Extensive research has shown that apart from aging, sleep problems occur when a regular sleep-wake schedule can’t be maintained for physiological or psychological reasons. This happens more often when you are traveling between time zones and where the body clock is either moving in clockwise or anticlockwise motion at rapid intervals, usually brought about by jetlag. Similarly night shift workers also experience this troubled transition as they have to forcibly work on the anti-body clock schedule. Irregular transition and sleep disorders may be detected through a polysomnography test wherein the exact disorder is detected and treated. Nowadays sleep problems have become a super specialization in medicine and sleep disorder clinics are being developed all over the world to treat the malady. Since sleep-wake transition is an important factor in categorizing the disorder, it is an object of separate study and is perhaps the basic standard of determination of the disease. If left untreated, sleep problems may lead to a plethora of psychological and physiological disorders and needs to be looked into immediately as and when they occur. |
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