Sleep Disorders

The higher estradiol levels that are seen during pregnancy are more prominent in pregnant women who have restless legs syndrome (RLS) than in those without, a recent study shows.

Authors of the study, published Feb. 1 2009 in the journal Sleep, say the data suggests that estrogens play a significant role in RLS during pregnancy. This also supports earlier reports of high RLS incidence in the last trimester of pregnancy (when estradiol is at its highest elevation).

Night terrors, also known as sleep terrors, sleep terror disorder, pavor nocturnus and DSM-IV AXIS I: 307.46 are a sleep disorder. Another sleep disorder known as Hallucinatory sleep paralysis (HSP) is often mistaken for night terrors because it has some similarities to night terrors.

Night terrors can run in families. They are not dangerous but what you do during the night terrors can be dangerous such as walking into objects or using kitchen appliances while not alert enough to do so safely. People have even been known to jump out of windows during their sleep.

Sleep groaning is a rare sleep disorder that involves a person groaning loudly while sleeping. The person groaning is usually not aware of the groaning and may or may not awaken as a result of the groaning noises.

This sleep disorder falls into a different category than talking while asleep does, because the groaning does not culminate into actual words or sentences. Instead, the groaning is a relatively calm and it occurs during a long exhale. This is not a groaning that indicates pain or a nightmare; it is simply a long groan that does not signify anything.

Slow Breathing in Sleep

The groans made by people with this sleep disorder usually occur along with very slow breathing. In fact, a characteristic of this sleep disorder is slower breathing than normal while sleeping.

Exploding head syndrome is not nearly as dramatic or fatalistic as it may sound. It is actually a rare sleep disorder. As the name implies, this disorder interrupts sleep with an imagined explosion within the person's head. There is no actual explosion, but people who suffer from this rare sleep disorder imagine a huge explosion just as they fall asleep or sometimes after they have already been asleep for some time.

The imagined explosion wakes up the person affected by this disorder, and in some instances the event can be frightening and relatively traumatic. People who suffer from Exploding Head Syndrome may have additional stress when trying to fall asleep because they fear the potential of recurring explosions and the sheer fear of the event may be enough to make sleeping problematic.

Explosion is Painless

For a small minority of people who actually seek help for a sleep disorder, the problem turns out to be Insufficient Sleep Syndrome. As the name implies, this is a disorder effecting people who simply do not get enough sleep at night.

The difference between people affected by this disorder and other people who are perpetually fatigued is that sufferers of Insufficient Sleep Syndrome don't realize that they aren't getting enough sleep at night. They aren't sure why they still feel tired after a night's sleep, and this is why they wind up seeking treatment.

Oftentimes this disorder can result from lifestyle choices. People start cutting back on sleep in order to get everything done that they need to do throughout the day, and in doing so they convince themselves that they don't need as much sleep as they thought. They get into the habit of getting far less sleep than their bodies actually require in order to function at full capacity.