3 Common Sleep Disorders

Health & Medical Blog

Sleep gives you time to rest your body and mind so you can recover from the stress of the day. However, when you suffer from a sleep disorder, you don't get the quality of sleep you need, which can lead to many complications during the daytime. If you would like to learn more, check out these three common sleep disorders.

1. Insomnia

Insomnia is a condition in which people have difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, and/or going back to sleep after waking too early. Acute insomnia isn't usually a cause for concern, and it typically goes away once the stress has passed. However, chronic insomnia can lead to many problems: physical, emotional, and mental complications.

The symptoms of insomnia are difficulty in falling asleep and staying asleep, not feeling rested after sleeping, and daytime sleepiness. However, all this can affect your life in other ways by making it harder to pay attention or causing you to experience irritability or depression.

2. Restless Leg Syndrome

Restless leg syndrome is a condition in which you feel like you need to move your legs. The condition doesn't usually cause pain, but it may cause other symptoms like the feeling of something crawling or pulling in your leg. The leg may also throb, itch, or feel like electric tingles keep flashing through it. All this irritation gives you the urge to move your legs.

Unfortunately, this often happens when you lay down to go to bed. It can also develop after you've been sitting or lying for a long time, such as in an airplane. When you move the affected leg: stretching, jiggling, or walking relieves the symptoms for a time, but as soon as you relax again, the sensation often returns. Experiencing the sensations caused by restless leg syndrome can make it difficult to fall asleep or go back to sleep if you wake up in the night.

3. Sleep Apnea

Depending on the severity, sleep apnea can range from mildly irritating to dangerous. When you have sleep apnea, your breathing regularly stops and restarts while you sleep. Naturally, this can be incredibly dangerous if the body doesn't start breathing again.

Sleep apnea can be caused by the throat muscles relaxing, which causes the throat to collapse and hinder breathing temporarily. Central sleep apnea, however, is caused by a lack of brain signals to the muscles that control breathing.

Regardless of the type, if you have sleep apnea, you may snore, gasp for air during the night, or stop breathing momentarily. These symptoms often go unnoticed by the sleeper. So until someone else notices, such as your spouse, you may not even know that you have sleep apnea. However, some indicators that you can notice on your own, during the day, are that you may feel sleepy or irritable and may wake up with a headache.

Sleep disorders can ruin your life. Not only do they make it hard to sleep, but they can make you sleepy and irritable during the day. If you are sick of struggling with a sleep condition or just suspect that you might have one, seek help. For more information, contact a sleep clinic, such as Elkview General Hospital, in your area today.  

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25 August 2021

introducing your daughter to the gynecologist

Having a daughter comes with a number of challenges. One challenge that you will one day need to tackle is determining when to introduce your daughter to the gynecologist. Do you take your daughter to the same gynecologist that you see or take her somewhere else? Do you wait until she gets her first period or do you take her in to learn about the menstrual cycle from the doctor? There is a long list of questions you likely have about introducing your daughter to the world of gynecology. Having gone through this twice myself, I have learned quite a bit and have included a lot of helpful information in my site to help other parents get through this complicated time a little easier.