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Sleep disorders

Sleep is essential to our health and with artificial lighting, a 24 hour lifestyle, and increasing global connectivity, disrupted sleep and sleep deprivation is becoming increasingly more common. Alarmingly, there is increasing evidence to link sleeping too little and sleep too much with increasing mortality, high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity and possibly later dementia.

 

Sleep disorders encompass a wide range of disorders including insomnia (the most common sleep disorder), abnormal behaviours that happen during sleep (sleep walking, sleep eating, sleep paralysis), sleep breathing disorders, disorders of excessive sleepiness (e.g. narcolepsy) and disorders of bodily rhythms (circadian rhythm disorders). In addition, sleep disorders are very common in mental health conditions such as ADHD, depression and anxiety.

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Sleep disorders frequently involve symptoms that belong traditionally to  separate medical specialities of respiratory medicine, neurology and psychiatry, so sometimes a team based approach is best. The symptoms can be subtle and some benefit from clarification with objective investigations like actigraphy and overnight sleep studies. 

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