SLEEPWiser

Insomnia is when falling asleep or staying asleep feels like a constant battle. People with insomnia often lie awake for hours, wake up multiple times at night, or rise too early and can’t get back to sleep.
This can be triggered by stress, anxiety, caffeine, certain medications, or changes in your routine. Sometimes, it sticks around with no obvious cause. Either way, insomnia throws off your body’s internal clock (called the circadian rhythm), which helps regulate when you feel sleepy and alert. Over time, poor sleep can leave you feeling groggy, moody, and drained.

Obstructive sleep apnea happens when the muscles in the throat relax too much during sleep, causing your airway to collapse block it. When this happens, breathing temporarily stops, sometimes hundreds of times a night.
Most people with OSA don’t even realize they stop breathing, but they often snore loudly, gasp, or feel exhausted in the morning no matter how early they went to bed. It’s common in people who are overweight, but anyone can develop it.
What’s happening inside the body? When the airway collapses, airflow is reduced or stopped, and then the oxygen levels drop. The brain senses the drop and jolts you awake just enough to reopen the airway, over and over again. This reduces deep, restful sleep and raises the risk of high blood pressure, heart issues, and daytime fatigue.

Parasomnias are unusual behaviors that happen while falling asleep, during sleep, or when waking up. This category includes things like:

• Sleepwalking
• Night Terrors
• Talking in your sleep
• Sleep paralysis
• Acting out dreams (REM sleep behavior disorder)

These experiences can be confusing or even scary, especially for bed partners. While parasomnias often affect children, they can happen at any age. In many cases, they’re linked to transitions between different sleep stages or to disrupted REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, the part of the cycle where most dreaming happens.

These disorders involve repeated movements that interrupt sleep. One example is Restless Legs Syndrome (RLS), where people feel an uncomfortable urge to move their legs—especially at night. It’s often described as a creepy, crawling, or itchy feeling, and the only way to make it go away is to move.
Another example is Periodic Limb Movement Disorder (PLMD), where the legs or arms twitch or jerk throughout the night, usually without the person even knowing. These movements might seem harmless, but they can keep the brain from reaching deeper stages of sleep, leaving you tired during the day.