What Are Sleep Disorders? Types, Symptoms, And Causes

Sleep disorders are a matter of rising concern since it is becoming common mostly due to unhealthy patterns in lifestyles. If you notice any irregularity in your sleeping cycle and other alarming signs, then don't leave it ignored or untreated, and immediately consult a doctor and make a proper diagnosis.

Sleep disorder is also known as sleep-wake disorder. In every 3 people, 1 person is having this issue. It happens due to several factors, such as inadequate sleep for a prolonged time, anxiety, complicated medications, other cognitive disorders, etc.

Types of Sleep Disorders

With the rising numbers of sleep disorders getting reported every year, it is being classified into different types. Those are as follows-

Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome

This happens when you don't easily fall asleep and need to stay awake for long hours in bed before ultimately falling asleep. It is a common syndrome of difficulty both waking up and falling asleep.

Narcolepsy

This is when you are not in control of your sleep cycle, and you don't know how long you are going to stay awake or remain asleep and can't regulate it.

Rapid Eye Movement

REM, commonly known as REM in shorter form, involves acting according to your dreams. It is that phase of sleeping where you are fully occupied with dreams.

Restless legs syndrome

It is the symptom of rapidly moving your legs here and there while you are sleeping. It also causes an uncomfortable sensation in the legs. The person doing it might feel incoherent but the people beside them can feel it and get disturbed.

Insomnia

This is the most common form of sleeping disorder, happening mostly among youngsters. Having a bad schedule of binge-watching or other activities till late at night leads to complications like this. It can cause potential risks like obesity, impaired work, poor school performance, frequent attention deviation and difficulty in concentrating, depression, irritability, anger issues, etc.

Obstructive sleep apnea

It generally happens with people who snore during their sleep, and the moment their breathing stops, their sleep gets disrupted, and they wake up in the middle of their sleep.

Sleep-related hypoventilation

People who have this infirmity suffer from several things, like shallow breathing, an increase in blood carbon dioxide levels, or low oxygen levels, which can be seriously fatal at times. Hypoventilation can also, in turn, cause other complications like hypothyroidism, pulmonary disorders, neuromuscular disorders, etc.

What Are The Symptoms That You Are Having A Sleep Disorder?

According to the frequency of the problems occurring, we can consider segregating insomnia into three types: Episodic, Persistent, and Recurrent. While episodic insomnia is a slightly mild version of insomnia happening for one to three months, Persistent and recurrent ones are slightly more serious ones lasting more than three months and a year, respectively.

• The problem persisting for such a long time is an alarming sign and needs immediate medical attention.
• Things like snoring, gasping, and choking are also not healthy signs of sleeping.
• The inability to move your body after you wake up and your body getting stuck losing all flexibility, is also an abnormality.
• Experiencing fatigue during the daytime due to insufficient sleep during nighttime is also a sign of sleep disorder. It is also sometimes paired with unusual breathing patterns or difficulty in breathing.
• Having sudden weight changes and performance degrading at the workplace or school are some other vivid signals of sleep disorder.

If you notice any of these, consider visiting a doctor at the earliest because these are signs of sicknesses relating to sleep.

Causes of sleep disorders

Certain things make it very difficult for someone to have a sound sleep. Sleeping requires peace of mind and good health, and when something out of this gets disrupted, the whole sleeping cycle gets disturbed. Some of the causes of sleep disorders are:

• Any kind of pain that exists for a longer than usual period is considered chronic, and due to this extreme pain, it becomes impossible for a person to fall asleep easily.
• Pain like arthritis, fibromyalgia, consistent headaches, repetitive lower back pains, frequent blackouts, and chronic fatigue syndromes are some of those that obstruct sleeping and should not be ignored as slight signs.
• However, it happens mostly in winter since sweat excretion is negligible in winter. We can also indicate this condition as Nocturia.
• Having a cold, resulting in throat pain and continuous coughing, can make you spend sleepless nights, and the same happens with deadly allergies.
• Finally, this is the most common factor for which youngsters suffer the most from insomnia, leaving them with even other abnormalities like sleepwalking, sleeptalking, and nightmares.
• If someone from your bloodline had these sleeping disorders, then you are likely to have it due to mutation.
• When there is impairment in chemical regulations, and certain chemicals and minerals are insufficient, sleep does not come easily,
• Excessive drinking of caffeine or alcohol may also lead to this.

All of the mentioned things can be one of the reasons behind sleep disorders.

Treatments for sleep disorders

Treating sleep disorder starts from home and self-treatment, and some practices like consuming melatonin supplements and having some good relaxation techniques like massages and spas, etc before bedtime can help. Improving the diet that consists of herbs and dietary supplements like Kava and L-tryptophan helps test ailments like insomnia. However, that is only mild or temporary disorders.

But, in case the problem persists for a long time and shows serious complications we cannot treat it casually. Rather we need to do effective diagnosis and clinical tests. Professional Sleep disorder treatment include:

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

It is psychotherapy that treats underlying issues and causes like ADHD, eating disorders, marital problems, PTSD, and many more - controlling sleep apnea using neurostimulators and having continuous positive airway pressure.

Having light therapy

They use a special high-end technology device for this and the emission of light is so bright and radiant that it feels equal to natural sunlight and helps in treating sleep-related disorders.

Diagnosis of sleep disorders

Nowadays, with the improvement of medical science and high-end expensive technologies at our fingertips, it is even easier to cure these problems.

Some effective ways of treating it are:

Polysomnography

It checks the overall things starting from oxygen levels in the body, brain waves, body movements, etc. A home sleep study (HST) is also performed specifically to diagnose sleep apnea.

Multiple sleep latency test (MSL)

It is particularly done to diagnose narcolepsy. It's a conjunction of daytime napping study with PSG at night.

Electroencephalogram (EEG )

It is an extended part of polysomnography. It checks the electrical activities in the brain.

Conclusion

If sufficient sleep does not happen in the nighttime, during the daytime it becomes very difficult to go on with our day amidst the hustles and bustles and perform all activities and chores. It also results in frequent accidents or falls, difficulty in maintaining deadlines in offices, trouble managing emotions and having an outburst, falling asleep and having a strong urge to have naps in the morning or afternoon, losing focus, and inability to retain things or being attentive. For severe sleep disorders like insomnia, medications such as Bensedin 10mg are sometimes prescribed to aid sleep.