The concept of normal sleep. Sleep is one of the most unexplored phenomena in human life. The attention of specialists has long been attracted by things connected with it; the recurring need for the human brain for rest, great variability and incomprehensibility of dreams, disturbances in the process of falling asleep or sleep itself. And if wakefulness is the main state of a working organism, then sleep can be put in second place.
Recently, studies of normal sleep have received a great impetus, which was facilitated by the discovery of such modern methods of patient examination as electroencephalography, polygraphic studies, in which several types of signals are simultaneously recorded: brain biocurrents, electrical impulses from muscles, eye movements, etc. methods, the main property of sleep was discovered – its heterogeneity. During normal sleep, the human brain constantly goes into one of two possible states: either it is a phase of slow sleep or a phase of REM sleep.
On the other hand, while awake, a person can be relaxed or tense.
An interesting fact has also been established that the need for sleep is directly related to a person’s age. In infants, it is greatest. In elderly people, on the contrary, it is minimal. In addition, the duration of sleep in each individual person is always associated with the individual characteristics of the structure of his body and lifestyle. This is confirmed by the fact that in adults, normal sleep can last from 2-3 hours in some cases and up to 10 or more in others.
The structure of sleep itself can also vary greatly from person to person.
There are so-called “larks”, that is, those who go to bed early and wake up early, and “owls”, that is, people who go to bed and wake up late. Somewhat less common are people who sleep twice a day. At the same time, a longer night’s sleep is combined with a short daytime sleep.
In the clinic, it is customary to distinguish four different types of sleep disorders: insomnia, drowsiness, failure in sleep and wakefulness, specific sleep disorders in the form of night fears, nightmares, sleepwalking, teeth grinding at night, and bedwetting. The structure of different types of sleep disorders in different age groups is different. Thus, adults are more likely to suffer from disorders in the form of insomnia. Disorders of the fourth group predominate among children.
It should also be noted that sleep disorders can be either an independent disease or be part of the structure of some other disease (for example, neurosis).