Sleepwalking Introduction
Sleepwalking, also known as somnambulism, is a behavior disorder that originates during deep sleep and results in walking or performing other complex behaviors while asleep.It is a parasomnia. A parasomnia refers to all the abnormal things that can happen to people when they sleep.
In childhood, sleepwalking has prevalence up to 17%, peaking between 8 and 12 years of age, with a strong genetic factor in 65% of cases.At least 20% of the children will experience sleepwalking at least once in their life. Eventually the children will outgrow it in their teens, or sometimes will still persist into adult life. In other cases, adults will sleepwalk too due to certain factors which will be discussed later.
There are five stages in a sleep cycle associated with dreaming. A complete sleep cycle consists of NEM sleep (non-rapid eye movement) which is divided into stage 1, 2, 3, 4 and REM sleep (rapid eye movement). One complete sleep cycle is about 90 to 100 minutes. So there is 4 to 5 sleep cycles in average one night sleep. Sleepwalking usually occurs in stage 3 of NEM, which is also called deep sleep stage. It can also occur in lighter sleep, which is stage 1 and 2. In some cases, sleepwalking can happen multiple
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Increase the safety of the house so that during sleep walking the person will avoid themselves from hurting him/herself and others. People who have sleep walking disorder can do complex activities and do not expect that they will wake up before doing something that requires coordination. Make sure the doors and windows are locked up tightly to ensure the person from going out of the house. Furthermore, please do hide the car keys to prevent the person from driving out. Next, it is advisable to hide sharp weapons or objects from the victim so that they don’t injure themselves. For a security measure, set alarm is the best way so that the alarm will ring when the sleep walking person leave the