Archive for the 'Sleep Disorders' Category

Parasomnias are common and frequent in children than in adults.

Parasomnia refers to an event which is infrequent and mild.

Parents should help their child overcome from parasomnia.

They occur often and sometimes they are severe and require medical condition.

Types of parasomnia are confusional arousal disorder, night terrors, sleep talking and sleep walking or somnambulism. The child will act complex behaviors when awake and when they are asleep, they don’t remember.

Parasomnias are common in children and they do not indicate any psychiatric or psychological problems. These diseases tend to run in families and children are affected. The other reasons for the child to be affected with parasomnia are fever, stress and tiredness.

Confusional arousals: Confusional arousal disorder occur mainly in infants and children. They begin with child crying in the bed. The child will be confused or upset.

The child does not recognize their parents and resists attempts to being consoled. The event last up to half an hour. Parents try to console their children and the children go back to sleep after the event and return to sleep.

Portable somnoscreen is a device used to diagnose the patients suffering from sleep disorders including serious sleep disorder, sleep apnea.

From three years, sleep laboratories have been using successfully the somnoscreen and are currently being used to diagnose and evaluate the patients.

Palm sized somnoscreen is the sleep monitoring system available today for performing sleep studies in any location.

Portable somnoscreen is smallest in size with full features. It is a complete portable polysomnograph with up to 28 channels, which provides unparalleled mobility for the patient and the sleep physician.

It transmits data wirelessly to the PC of sleep practitioner through the built-in transmitter where it can be monitored in real time or stored for later evaluation. It allows the patient to sleep normally and the patient is free to move and even go to toilet.

There is no need to be tied with wires and electrodes to the bed and therefore it reduces the incidence of panic attacks. The electrodes, cables and unit are all worn on the patient. The unit is fitted directly onto the thorax or abdomen.

It contains five internal sensors. The body position sensor determines the patient’s position. The internal effort sensor allows the user to define the thoracic or abdominal effort.

During childhood, almost every children experience nightmares. Children get nightmares due to the stress in normal lives.

Once your child was awaken by nightmare, it is difficult for your child to go back to sleep. Nightmares are common in children two to six years old.

A nightmare is a bad dream, which can make your child feel anxious, upset or scared but does not cause any harm to your child.

Nightmares take place during light stage of sleep. Our brain flows through different stages of sleep in which some stages are deeper than others.

Dreaming takes place during lighter stages of sleep and children who have nightmares cannot get into deep stages of sleep.

Children get nightmares due to the stressful things that happen during daytime. They may face problems in the school, home, sports, school work or exams. Another reason for nightmares is watching scary and horror movies or reading scary books before going to bed.

Children who are sick, especially with high fever may have nightmares. Certain medications result in nightmares. Children wake up in the night when they have a bad dream. They wake up talking, crying and yelling and may be very frightened.

Almost everyone suffers with changing seasons and that too with winter blues.

Seasonal Affective Disorder(SAD) is referred to as winter blues.

Sunlight can lift your spirits while dull and rainy day makes you gloomy.

For some people, the shift in mood due to shift in season may not affect with daily life. But some people suffer with seasonal depression and laziness with cold weather.

Symptoms of seasonal affective disorder

The symptoms include depression, mood change, weight gain, fatigue, decreased energy, feeling of excessive sleepiness, difficulty in concentration, irritability, and increased appetite.

Seasonal affective disorder not only affects your ability to function normally but also affects the ability to get a good night’s sleep. Mostly women are affected with SAD.

SAD is associated with several sleep disorders such as advanced sleep phase syndrome and delayed sleep phase syndrome.

Waking up early in the morning and feeling tired early in the evening is referred as advanced sleep phase syndrome. Sleeping up to late morning and inability to fall asleep is called delayed sleep phase syndrome.

Sleep disordered breathing involves repeated awakenings from sleep due to the cessations of breathe during sleep.

The obstruction of breathe may occur due to the narrowed airway passage. You wake up to start breathing and then fall back to sleep.

Depending on the condition, sleep disordered breathing occurs. Your airway may be completely obstructed or partially obstructed, muscles of the throat collapse resulting in blockage of airway, your brain may forget to breathe during sleep or there may be an obstruction to the free flow of air. You may not be aware of the awakenings but your sleep will be disturbed.

Types of sleep disordered breathing:

1. Sleep apnea: Sleep apnea occurs when breathing stops during sleep. You wake up gasping for breathe, start breathing and again fall back to sleep.
2. Obstructive sleep apnea: Obstructive sleep apnea occurs when the muscles of the throat collapse resulting in complete or partial blockage of airway passage.
3. Central sleep apnea: In central sleep apnea, the brain forgets to breathe during sleep. The central sleep apnea is related to the function of central nervous system.
4. Mixed sleep apnea: In mixed sleep apnea, both obstructive and central sleep apnea events occur.

Sleep patterns are often abnormal in dementia such as Alzheimer’s disease.

Dementia is a disorder in which people lose the ability to remember.

Dementia develops at any age but it is most common in older people.

Time spent in deep sleep decreases as dementia advances and you may be easily awakened.

Your circadian rhythm is reversed and often you sleep during the day and wake up during night. Due to the reversal of wake and sleep and sleep disturbances at night results in many other health problems.

Sun downing

As people with dementia sleep during day and wake up during night, they wander at night with restless behavior. Wandering at night with this behavior is called sun downing. A person can experience sun downing at any time of the day or night.

Sun downing results from disturbed sleep in older dementia patients. Sun downing may be related to the change in circadian rhythms as circadian rhythm becomes irregular in dementia.

Reasons for sleep problems in dementia patients

People with dementia have disorders such as dehydration, infection, arthritis that contribute to sleep problems. The sleep can be interrupted with the use of certain drugs and medications.

Several factors may contribute to the inability to sleep well as you get older. Some of the common causes include:

Poor sleep habits:

1. Uneven sleep-wake patterns can affect your circadian rhythm timing and make it difficult to maintain a regular sleep schedule.
2. Alcohol before bedtime can disrupt sleep
3. Daytime sleeping can interfere with night time sleep
4. Everyday stress can cause sleep problem

Medical illness:

1. Heart failure can cause breathing problems that can disrupt sleep.
2. Pain is one of the common cause foe poor sleep in older people.
3. Urinary problems and frequent need to urinate may cause frequent awakenings.
4. Constipation can cause uneasiness which can disrupt the sleep
5. Sinus problems, nasal congestion, allergies can interrupt the sleep.
6. Rapid heartbeat and palpitations can disturb the sleep.
7. Itchy skin conditions often cause sleep problems.
8. Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) causes discomfort that can interfere with sleep.

Medications:

1. Prolonged sleeping medications use may cause daytime drowsiness.
2. Sedative antidepressants and sedative antipsychotics can cause daytime drowsiness. Sleeping during the day disturb nighttime sleep.
3. Smokers have more sleep disturbances than nonsmokers. Smokers also have difficulty falling asleep and decreased sleep duration. Caffeine and nicotine reduces the amount of sleep.

Drug Related Sleep disorders:

Many prescription and nonprescription medications can cause sleep problems. The severity of sleep problems caused by a medication will vary from person to person.

The following are nonprescription medicines which may cause sleep problems:

1. Medications with caffeine which includes brands Anacin, Nodoz and Excedrin as well as cough and cold medications.
2. Pseudoephedrine, including the brand Sudafed.
3. Nicotine, which disturbs the sleep and reduce total sleep time. Smokers report more daytime sleepiness and minor accidents than do nonsmokers, especially in younger age groups.
4. Illegal drugs such as amphetamines, methamphetamines and cocaine

Alcohol related Sleep disorders:

Alcohol may induce sleep as it is considered as a sedative or calming drug. But the quality of sleep is often fragmented during the second half of the sleep period.

Alcohol increases the number of times you awaken in the later half of the night when the alcohol’s relaxing effect goes off. Alcohol keeps you in the lighter stages of sleep and prevents you from getting the deep sleep and REM sleep you need.

Alcohol’s sleep-inducing effect may decrease with continued consumption just before bedtime, as its troublesome effects continue or increase. The sleep distraction resulting from alcohol use may lead to daytime weariness and drowsiness.