In 2005, the U.S. Center for Disease Control's Compressed Mortality Data revealed 684 fatalities related to sleep disorders. But exactly how and why sleep disorders kill people still largely remains a medical mystery, despite the overwhelming evidence that sleep disturbances are simply bad for a person's overall mental and physical health. Three of the most familiar and potentially deadly sleep disorders are sleep apnea, insomnia and narcolepsy.
Sleep Apnea
One of the most deadly sleep disorders is sleep apnea, a condition in which a person literally stops breathing while sleeping, the result of an excessive relaxation of the throat's muscles. Symptoms of sleep apnea include drowsiness during the day, poor performance at work and the onset of depression. However, some treatments can help alleviate sleep apnea. They include exercise and weight loss, quitting smoking and drinking, alternating sleep positions, surgery, and nasal and oral devices.
Insomnia
Insomnia is a sleeping disorder in which a person can experience difficulty in sleeping for up to weeks at a time. Unlike sleep apnea, which can directly kill a person due to arrested breathing, the cumulative effects of insomnia can prove fatal. Insomnia-induced sleep deprivation interferes with a person's ability to function during the day and make sound judgments. In fact, drowsy driving has been likened to driving while intoxicated in that its consequences can be deadly. Over 100,000 car crashes each year are due to drivers falling asleep at the wheel. Some causes of insomnia include stress and anxiety, depression, environmental changes and pain. Additionally, insomnia worsens with age.
Narcolepsy
Another potentially deadly sleep disorder is narcolepsy, a condition in which the sufferer falls asleep suddenly. Narcolepsy can manifest slowly over time or quite suddenly, but the symptoms include excessive daytime drowsiness and depression. Indicators of narcolepsy might also include sleep paralysis, a condition in which the person is unable to move his body just before falling asleep or upon wakening, and hypnologic hallucinations. These hallucinations are dreamlike episodes that can be extremely frightening and cause one to lose control of one's body.
Mystery Disorders
Over the years, there have been documented cases of rare, . Since 1977, over 100 otherwise healthy Southeast Asian adults living in the United States have died in their sleep from what has been termed Sudden Unexpected Nocturnal Death Syndrome. These native Hmong refugees are purported to have died from the continued psychological stress of nightmares related to the war waged in their homeland of Laos.
Another mysterious and deadly sleeping disorder is Fatal Familial Insomnia. This is a rare genetic disorder affecting fewer than 50 families worldwide. Essentially, these otherwise healthy individuals experience an onset of insomnia that eventually deprives them altogether of their ability to sleep. In time, they begin to experience hallucinations and paranoia due to sleep deprivation; in the end, they die. After the onset of the disorder, patients usually die within three years. There is no known cure.
Effects
The effects of sleep deprivation caused by sleep disorders are very real. In fact, lab rats deprived of sleep die within two weeks. People need sleep in order to recharge their mental and physical faculties. Those who experience prolonged periods of sleep deprivation are more likely to suffer depression, heart disease, hypertension and slower reaction times, all of which have the potential to be deadly.
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