Imagine it: you’re watching your favorite spooky movie late at night. It’s autumn and the wind rattles your windows, whistling through the cracks and crannies of your home. You feel the hair on the back of your neck stand straight up, and there it is: a shadowy figure stumbling toward you, feet shuffling, face shrouded with hair, head bent and lolling. You begin to scream, but you stop just in time. It’s just your daughter, and she’s wandering around in quite an unconscious state.
Topics: parasomnia, sleep walking
Parasomnias are a group of sleep disorders in which something goes awry with a person’s sleep cycle.
If you break down the word “parasomnia,” you get “para,” which can mean abnormal or incorrect, “somnia,” which, of course, means sleep. Indeed, something is not normal or correct with the sleep of a parsomnia sufferer.
Parasomnias are oftened referred by those in the sleep medicine field as those things that go "Bump in the Night" since many are associated with some type of movement during sleep.
Outside of sleep apnea, restless leg syndrome, and periodic limb movement disorder, many disruptive sleep disorders can be considered a parasomnia. And most of them can lead to sleep deprivation—after all, even if you get the ideal 7-9 hours of sleep, the quality of those hours can be diminished if your sleep cycle is interrupted. Here are six common parasomnias that afflict sleepers:
Topics: sleep apnea, sleep disorders, parasomnia, night terrors, nightmares
Sleepwalking is often portrayed in movies, on television, and even homemade Youtube clips in either one of two lights: hilariously funny or supernaturally terrifying. But for the sleepwalkers themselves and the loved ones they share a home with, the reality of sleepwalking may be found somewhere in the middle.
Topics: sleep disorders, parasomnia
