Sleepwalking: Information, Symptoms and Causes

Sleepwalking (Noctambulism or Somnambulism): Information, Symptoms and Causes

Sleepwalking (also written as Sleep Walking and also called Noctambulism and Somnambulism) is a parasomnia sleep disorder where the sufferer engages in activities that are normally associated with wakefulness (such as eating, dressing, or walking) while asleep or in a sleep-like state, without the conscious knowledge of the person.

Most cases of Sleepwalking occur when the person is woken up as a result of something or someone disturbing their Short Wave Sleep (SWS). In the vast majority of these cases, the person may sit up, look around, and immediately go back to sleep. It is much rarer for a person to perform various activities before returning to sleep.

Symptoms

The main symptom of Sleepwalking is engaging in activities that are normally associated with wakefulness (such as eating, dressing, or walking) while asleep or in a sleep-like state, without the conscious knowledge of the person.

Sleepwalkers engage in these activities with their eyes open, meaning that they can navigate in their surroundings.

Random Sleeping Tip

The sleep that comes on the natural way is the best, but the sleep that is being aided with the help of medicines is something that just makes one dependent on them physiologically and psychologically. It is very important for you realize that you need to be able to initiate sleep the natural way rather than using the medication to aid in sleep if you can. The medicines that we take for any clinical problem have a lot of side effects and that they can cause problems to other organ systems as well, therefore it is wise to really work out as to how you can taper down the medicine to not using at all.

A Sleepwalker's eyes may have a glazed or empty appearance, and if they are spoken to or questioned, then the Sleepwalker will be slow to answer and will be unable to respond in an intelligible manner.

Please Note: Sleepwalkers do not walk around or perform activities with their eyes closed and their arms outstretched as parodied in cartoons and various Hollywood productions.

Causes

Sleepwalking is affected by the following factors:

Age

Sex

Sleepwalking can affect people of any age, and usually occurs when an individual awakes suddenly from Slow Wave Sleep (SWS), also called Stage 3 and 4 Sleep, triggering the sleepwalking episode.
In children and young adults, up to 25% of the night is spent in SWS. However this decreases as the person ages until none can be measured in the elderly people.
For this reason, children and young adults (or anyone else who achieves high amounts of SWS), are more likely to be woken up and, for the same reasons, they tend to have more Sleepwalking episodes than older people.
Some research suggests that the highest prevalence of sleepwalking occurs in children of 11 to 12 years of age, and affects 16% of children in this age group.
Boys are more likely to sleepwalk than girls.

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