Sleep Disorders Unit

Comprehensive evaluation of patients with sleep disorders, insomnia or drowsiness. Important symptoms with a good study can be solved by allowing the patient to join again to a normal life.
There are over one hundred different disorders of sleep and wakefulness, which can be grouped into four categories, according to Medline, a data service of the National Library of Medicine of the United States.
The four major areas of sleep disorders are: trouble falling asleep and staying asleep (insomnia), trouble staying awake (excessive daytime sleepiness), trouble maintaining a regular sleep schedule (problems with sleep rhythm) and unusual behaviors during sleep (sleep-disruptive behaviors).
Insomnia include difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep and episodes may come and go, last 2 to 3 weeks (short term) or be long lasting (chronic).
People with excessive daytime sleepiness feel tired during the day. Symptoms of trouble staying awake is called hypersomnia and are, among others: fibromyalgia and low thyroid function, mononucleosis and other viral diseases, narcolepsy and other sleep disorders and obesity.
According to Medline, also you can present problems when a constant schedule of sleeping and waking is not maintained, for example, when traveling across different time zones and work in shifts on rotating schedules, particularly at night. In fact, these disorders are called sleep syndrome and irregular waking, jet lag syndrome, short sleeper nature (the person sleeps less hours than normal but has no ill effect), paradoxical insomnia (the person actually sleeps a lot different time at which believes and sleep disorder because of shift work.
Among the abnormal behaviors that disrupt sleep, which are included under the name of parasomnias and are fairly common in children, are night terrors, sleepwalking and trastrono of behavior associated with REM sleep (the person moves during REM sleep and may represent dreams).
All these alterations in the normal sleep cycle are discussed in the Sleep Laboratory where the patient is evaluated during their sleep, with tests such as polysomnography, which includes different tests, such as electromiagrama, electroencephalogram, electrocardiogram and nasal breathing and abdominal among other assessments.