Pacific Sleep Labs

Sleep Disorders

Insomnia. Is the difficulty falling asleep or inability to maintain sleep. There are many causes to insomnia the most common being poor sleep hygiene, use of drugs-stimulants or sleeping pills, depression or anxiety. Intermittent insomnia maybe a normal phenomenon. Any insomnia lasting more than few weeks will need evaluation.

Chronic Fatigue. This is an area of controversy. Fatigue is a subjective phenomenon and hard to quantify. It is also difficult to establish when it is abnormal compared with normal, everyday fatigue. There are some whose persistent and unexplained fatigue truly becomes problematic for daily living. There are some thoughts that these individuals may have occult sleep disorder.

Narcolepsy. A disorder where one is severely sleepy, causing one to fall asleep suddenly at inappropriate times, often times going straight in to REM sleep with muscle weakness and even sudden paralysis referred to as cataplexy. These patients tend to have severe daytime sleepiness. Not only is their wakefulness abnormal, their sleep during the night also appears disrupted.

Restless Leg Syndrome. This is a disorder that causes people to have very uneasy and uncomfortable sensations in the legs especially during evening . It is often relieved with movement or walking and makes falling asleep difficult.

Sleep walking, sleep talking, night terrors are what sleep specialist call parasomnias. These usually occur in deeper stages of sleep during first half of the night. They occur more commonly in children, who usually grow out of it. Some times this can occur during times of stress.