Common Sleep Disorders

Not only does sleep plays an essential part in maintaining health. There are several disorders  that affect the duration and the depth of your sleep. Improper sleep can cause numerous behavioral and cognitive problems. Some of the disorders include:


This is the most common sleep disorder. This usually means the inability to initiate or maintain continuous sleep.

Insomnia affects almost many women and 40% of men. It affects most people over the age of 60. Insomnia can affect both the quality and duration. In the elderly, insomnia may be due to frequent awakenings and the reversal of sleeping hours from night to day.

Insomnia can be aggravated by three important factors:

Psychological factors – resulting from age, tension and emotional changes. Psycho-physiological insomnia is common – considered when the patient cares excessively about his inability to sleep through the night it increases the risk of an insomniac night. There is usually time of resulting short sleep, daytime fatigue, and irritability.

Psychiatric Disorders – Sleep low due to the presence of psychiatric problems like depression, anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder Etc. Insomnia can manifest in several ways. Some may suffer from transient insomnia that usually lasts just a few nights. This is commonly caused by a change, stress, anxiety, shift work or emotional jet lag Etc.

Organic Factors – Sleep low due to other diseases and disorders like apnea of heart disease, asthma, snoring, obstructive sleep. Other medical disorders include those that cause pain such as arthritis.

Chronic insomnia lasts longer than a month usually. Insomnia symptoms rarely require confirmed diagnosis. Acute symptoms usually does not require a sleep study for confirmed diagnosis.



Sleep apnea

This type of disorder occurs when there is complete or partial obstruction of the upper airway. This may be from the different severity of snoring to severe obstruction and waking from sleep. This leads to interrupted drowsiness of sleep and day time.



Narcolepsy occurs in young adults in their second to third decades of life. It affects men and women alike. There is excessive daytime drowsiness, paralysis of the muscles during sleep and hallucinations during sleep. The patient may be awake but be totally paralyzed – unable to move and experience hallucinations.


What can be done?

There are a number of things that can be done to stop sleep disorders. First is to take a look at the mattress that you’re sleeping on. Just cause you need to sleep in a new house doesn’t mean that you can’t sleep well on an air mattress. Go here to see some top rated air mattresses.

Also make sure to avoid caffeine, alcohol and any pharmaceutical drugs before bed as they can disrupt your sleep rhythm.

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