Sleep disorders, or somnipathy, is a medical disorder of a person's sleep pattern. Some sleep disorders are severe enough to interfere with normal physical, mental, social and emotional functioning. Polysomnography and actigraphy are tests often ordered for some sleep disorders.
Disturbances in sleep can be caused by a variety of problems, including teeth grinding (bruxism) and nightmares. When a person has difficulty falling asleep and/or sleeping through with no apparent cause, it is called insomnia.
Sleep disorders are broadly classified into dyssomnias, parasomnias, circadian rhythm sleep disorders involving the timing of sleep, and other disorders, including those caused by medical or psychological conditions.
The most common sleep disorder is insomnia. Others include sleep apnea, narcolepsy and hypersomnia (excessive sleepiness at inappropriate times), sleeping sickness (disruption of the sleep cycle due to infection), sleepwalking and nightmares. Management of sleep disorders secondary to mental, medical or addiction disorders should focus on the underlying conditions.
Primary sleep disorders are common in both children and adults. However, there is a significant lack of awareness in children with sleep disorders because most cases go unidentified. Several common factors involved in the development of a sleep disorder include increased medication use, age-related changes in circadian rhythms, environmental and lifestyle changes, and previously diagnosed physiological problems and stress. The risk of developing sleep disorders in the elderly is especially increased for sleep-disordered breathing, periodic limb movements, restless leg syndrome, REM sleep behavior disorders, insomnia and circadian rhythm disorders.
Treatment BeterKlinic
BeterKliniek is the clinic for Integrative Medicine that bridges regular and non-regular medicine.
An van Veen (physician) and Michael van Gils (therapist) look for the cause of a condition or disease. That is where the treatment starts otherwise, as people often say, it is 'carrying water to the sea'. We call this cause medicine. Sometimes it is also desirable to treat the symptoms (at the same time). We call this symptom medicine.
Chronic disorders often have their cause in epi- genetics. You can schedule a free informative telephone consultation (phone number 040-7117337 until 1 p.m.) at BeterKliniek to discuss your symptoms so that we can provide you with further advice.
