Is your sleep not refreshing or complete? Are you unable to control your sleep in day time or fall asleep in a meeting or while driving?
Sleep is the greatest restorative of fatigued body and its functions. It also produces excessive daytime sleepiness if not complete. Maximum neural hormonal function to repair, replace or enhance bodily functions including brain occurs during sleep. It is like whenever we are sleeping with eyelids closed is like a restaurant where shutters are down but inside cleaning, mopping operations are going on for the next session of opening of restaurant.
Most of us are under wrong impression about adequate duration of sleep. Sleep has two components, duration (quantity) and depth (quality). When a person is unable to have adequate duration of quality of sleep, day-time alertness and functions suffer. Sleep duration alone by itself is not sufficient for a good sleep which requires intensity and uninterrupted nature of sleep. Such sleep is dependent upon biological clock. In the absence of which refreshing quality of sleep is lost. When there is repeated inefficient sleep or inadequate duration of sleep or insufficient quality of night time sleep ,it causes ill health, manifesting as lack of energy, lack of concentration, memory changes. Whereas sleep-deprived individuals are those who have voluntarily deprived themselves of sleep due to the nature of work or other factors and will rapidly fall asleep the moment they get a chance to sleep. This is in contrast to chronic insomnia. AASM (The American Academy of Sleep Medicine) recommends 7hrs of quality night time sleep.
Has your partner complained of being hit during sleep?. Or you get a terror or panic attack while sleeping or wakes you up from sleep. These are sleep abnormalities like sleepwalking. There are some painful states during sleep called RLS(Restless Leg Syndrome) which awaken the person from sleep. Whereas irresistible unprovoked, uncontrollable episodes of sleeping even while sitting or driving or in a meeting is an illness called narcolepsy which if untreated can result in various roadside accidents.