Sleeping Disorders: Types, Symptomps, and Treatment

Sleep disorders (essay)

Over 100 million people suffer from sleep disorders or poor sleep, most of us are acquainted with insomnia the most common sleep disorder. There are others that we will be discussing as well, beginning with insomnia, then sleep apnea, night terrors, and ending with narcolepsy. There are many reasons as to why a person isn’t getting the sleep they need, it could be job related, stress related, or genetic. These disorders range from harmless and annoying to life threatening and life ruining. To explore sleeping disorders, this essay will be discussing what to expect with these disorders, what the symptoms are, and how they are treated.

Insomnia is the most common sleep disorder among us, probably because we have all experience it at one point in our lives or another. Insomnia is the inability to fall asleep at night, leaving the person dissatisfied with the little amount of sleep they did get. Insomnia is the most easily treated sleep disorder, although contrary to popular belief, counting sheep will not help put you to sleep, and although sleeping pills will work, they also disrupt REM sleep making the person feel less rested. The easiest way to treat insomnia is to let it runs its course, and to try and reduce the sleep-inhibiting thoughts.

Sleep apnea is another common disorder, the only symptoms of this disorder is daytime sleepiness and snoring. At night is when this disorder can become dangerous, this is because the disorder lies in an abnormality of breathing. If a person has sleep apnea then this means that they actually stop breathing for up to a minute, and this can happen several hundred times a night! Along with the less serious effects during the day such as inattention, neglect, or falling asleep, there is a more dangerous affect as a result of not enough oxygen getting to the brain. There can be damage to brain cells along with elevated blood pressure caused by the prolonged absence of oxygen getting to the brain and circulating through the body. Treatment is usually focused around decreasing the amount of episodes per night, this can be accomplished with a device that pumps air into the lungs and keeps the airway open during sleep.

Night terrors commonly occur in children and are no health threat although they can be very distressing, especially since it is children that most often get them. The most presentable symptom is going to come in the form of a screaming child, when the child becomes alert they will more than likely not remember what they were so terrified of but the feeling of being scared will remain with them. There is really no treatment for this disorder except to wait for the child to grow out of this tasking, night-time extracurricular.

Narcolepsy is one of the most unusual of sleep disorders, producing daytime sleep attacks. This means that a once alert person will fall victim to a sudden bout of sleep fullness, usually without warning. This can be quite dangerous because it can happen at any given moment, say like when driving a car. Besides the sudden sleep attacks, following the sleep attacks, the victim may suffer by a sudden loss of muscle control. Studies show that Narcolepsy is triggered by a diminished supply of hypocretin. This means that there is currently no cure but certain drug can reduce the frequency in which these attacks occur.

If you have a sleep disorder, don’t worry, it’s probably not serious and it will go away on its own, but just to be on the safe side, you can see a psychologist or a specialist to make sure. The four disorders that were just discussed are the most commonly dealt with disorders that most of us will ever come into contact with, before you buy any sleeping pills or ZzzQuil, try playing the sound of a waterfall while you’re trying to fall asleep, it might be able to distract you from the thoughts that are keeping you up. Sleep disorders are a nuisance but they are something most of us will have to deal with sometime in our life, there will always be big test willing to stress us into pulling an all-nighter. Try to relax, and try to get some sleep and that’s really all you can do.