As promised here is the remainder of the information I have collected regarding sleep disorders and need. Again, I strongly advise you to see a doctor immediately if you think you may have some sort of sleep disorder. It is not something to ignore as it could effect your health in more than one way!

So in part one of this article we covered Sleep Apnea and Narcolepsy. Those are the two most common sleep disorders. What we don’t hear about very often is Restless legs syndrome. This a discomfort in the legs which tends to make people feel as though they need to move their the legs. It can be a bit difficult to describe but it is usually referred to as a crawling, tingling or prickling sensation. Unlike the first two disorders we spoke about this one is more of an aggravation that a health issue. It can be treated with medications BUT oddly enough the medications tend to make one sleepy thus allowing one to only take it at bedtime! RLS is most likely to occur while riding in a car for long distances or sitting at a desk. A quick relief if there is no doctor available is to take a shower, go for a walk or even a quick massage may work.

We have all heard of insomnia, right? I doubt that there is one person who is able to read this article that has not had a least one night of insomnia. This is not so much a “disorder” as it is a complaint. That being said, most of the previous disorders I have talked about can also be categorized with insomnia. Basically it is when the body has difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep (many awakenings) or waking up too early which is also known as sleep state misperception . Usually an simple over the counter sleep aide will get you through this but if the problem continues your doctor may recommend taking an prescription sleep aid to get you through the period of time that is causing you to have the insomnia.

Last but not least is sleep deprivation also known as sleep debt. I personally am not sure why anyone would put anything above their health but sleep deprivation or sleep debt is caused only by ourselves. When we do not get the sleep we need, we automatically start to build up a “sleep debt“.Broken down, if you are losing one hour of sleep a day during the week, by Friday you have a 5 hour sleep debt. We usually make up for this by sleeping in on the weekends . Often times if the Friday night party crowd heads out and starts to drink on top of their sleep debt it can turn into a very ugly scene. Of course drinking and driving is always a bad idea but having even one drink on top of needing sleep can double your risk of an accident or worse.

There are so many other disorders such as sleep walking, night terrors and hypersomnia. Those are usually less commonly heard about but still yet very realistic to those who have them. For more information about these or other sleep orders you can visit www.sleepfoundation.org.