This text presents current data on sleep, factors that disrupt sleep and gives a general overview of the most common sleep disorders. Sleep is still an incompletely understood phenomenon; although its mechanism is known, it is not fully understood why we sleep. According to WHO data, our sleep is getting shorter and shorter, and there are an increasing number of sleep disorders and sleep disruptors, the most common of which is noise. Sleep disorders are associated with both somatic and psychological illnesses.
Some consequences of sleep disorders
The physiological consequences of persistent insomnia are now increasingly well known. These include a higher risk of death as a secondary effect of psychiatric or somatic illness, a higher risk of depression or other affective illness - up to 5 times more often than in the general population. Cardiovascular and gastrointestinal diseases are also more common in this group than in people without insomnia. These people have twice as many visits to doctors and twice as many hospitalisations, and four times as many accidents as the general population. A lower quality of life has been shown in people suffering from insomnia and problems at family, work or school.
Sleep deprivation also co-occurs with obesity. People with sleep deprivation are twice as likely to be obese, have a greater increase in BMI over time and a greater chance of developing obesity. There is a hypothesis that short sleep may lead to obesity in such a way that appetite is increased through hormonal changes caused by sleep deprivation. This view requires further empirical verification.
