Do you generally have trouble falling asleep even when you are dead tired? Do you often find yourself awake in the middle of the night, even though you went to bed exhausted?
If this is you, then you might just have some sort of a sleep disorder. Sleep disorders cause more than just sleepiness; they might have a deteriorating effect on your productivity, psychological and overall health. It is a must to understand them in detail. Today, Dr. Pulkit Sharma, Clinical Psychologist and Psychoanalytical Therapist at VIMHANS helps us understand the top 7 most common sleep disorders in detail.
Insomnia. People suffering from insomnia either have difficulty in sleep initiation, sleep continuation or both. It is a highly prevalent sleep disorder and can be transitional or primary. Transitional insomnia is a sleep disturbance caused due to stressful life circumstances and resolves once the stress is taken care of. Primary insomnia is poorly understood, long-term and is difficult to treat. Insomnia has an adverse impact on your mood, attention and concentration. Lifestyle changes and psychological treatments can help treat this condition.
Sleep Apnea. This condition is marked by difficulty in breathing while you are asleep. Either there is a rupture in breathing or the person's breath, in general, becomes superficial. This prevents the person from getting a deep rejuvenating sleep. It often leads to fatigue during daytime. This condition is manageable with a range of available treatments.
Periodic Limb Movement Disorder (PLMD). It is characterized by an involuntary movement of limbs while sleeping. People suffering from this condition have little awareness about it and often their close ones are the first to detect it. Stimulants such as alcohol and caffeine can worsen these symptoms. This condition is treatable by medicines used in the management of Parkinson's disease.
Restless Legs Syndrome. The individual experiences certain unusual sensations in their legs due to which they have an urge to move their legs constantly. Across individuals this condition varies in intensity. Symptoms may exacerbate temporarily during relaxation. Various pharmacological and non-pharmacological treatments are available.
Narcolepsy. People suffering from this condition feel extremely sleepy during daytime and drift into sleep during the waking hours. The individual may experience temporary freezing or paralysis during these sleep attacks. Antidepressants, special diets, lifestyle changes and psychological treatments are very helpful in this condition. Social support is essential as people may consider the person to be lazy.
Sleep Walking. A sleep walker performs tasks that people generally do when awake, while fast asleep. For instance - walking, getting ready, brushing teeth, going out of the house, etc. The person has no or limited insights into their behaviors during sleep and may get shocked when others tell them about it. Apart from certain biological factors, unconscious psychological processes, especially dissociation, contribute to sleep walking. This condition needs a thorough diagnosis and management as there may be a risk to the person's life.
Delayed sleep phase disorder. The person takes a lot of time to fall off to sleep and consequently finds it hard to get up on the scheduled time in morning. Once in a while such occurrences happen with everyone, but for people with this disorder this is almost a daily phenomenon. These people feel more alert at night than in the daytime. It commonly starts in childhood or adolescence and can be helped greatly with proper treatment.
No comments:
Post a Comment