Active duty military personnel lead stressful lives. Whether deployed abroad or serving stateside, demands on their time, bodies, and families can prove difficult to manage. Studies have shown that this stress can negatively affect the sleeping habits of active duty military personnel. According to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, a recent study revealed that over 85% of active duty military suffer from some type of sleep disorder.

Do you have trouble sleeping at night because of strange or unpleasant sensations in your legs? Would you describe these sensations as creeping, pulling, itching, burning, throbbing, or any other uncomfortable feeling? Do your symptoms occur only when relaxing or trying to rest? Do these sensations cause an uncontrollable or overwhelming urge to move your legs to relieve your discomfort? If so, you may be suffering from restless leg syndrome.

Have you been told by your bedpartner that your legs move frequently while you sleep? Have you noticed that you're feeling tired during the day, even after you've had a full night's sleep? If so, it's possible that you may be suffering from periodic limb movement disorder (PLMD).

Do you find yourself having difficulty going to sleep because of chronic back pain, arthritis, fibromyalgia, or any other painful afflictions? Does the pain regularly wake you in the middle of the night, leaving you to stare at the ceiling, unable to return to sleep because of the constant aches in your body?

Roughly 100 million Americans suffer varying degrees of chronic pain, which is estimated to cost $600 billion a year in medical treatments and lost productivity at work (1). However, there is another cost of chronic pain that often goes unmentioned– the hours of lost sleep that are directly resulted from experiencing continuous pain.

There are more than 70 recognized sleep disorders that can plague people's nightly slumber. Many of these sleep disorders are caused by physiological problems, neurological disorders, medical problems, psychiatric troubles, environmental factors, and even disruptions to one's biological clock.

Unlike these other disorders, Insufficient sleep syndrome (commonly referred to as sleep restriction, sleep deprivation, and inadequate sleep) is a behavioral induced sleep disorder in which the sufferer simply fails to make adequate time for sufficient sleep.