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Sleepwalking
Disorder
Sleepwalking
Disorder affects people of any age. This condition
happens when the person moves around while he is a state of
SWS or slow sleep wave sleep. While sleepwalking, the person
has this blank face; unresponsive to the efforts of others
when they communicate with him. Waking him up would be quite
difficult to do. Within several minutes after waking him up,
there’s no impairment of mental activity or behavior
although there may be a short period of confusion or
disorientation.
Sleepwalking Disorder is categorized
under Parasomnia - the involvement of abnormal movements,
behaviors and dreams that happen while in the process of
falling asleep, while at sleep and in between the sleep
stages until waking up.
The stages of sleep are as follows: Stage 1
is called light sleeping. This is when you’re in and out of
sleep that a slight movement or sound can eventually wake
you up. The eye movements are very slow. During this stage,
people often experience the feeling of falling.
Stage 2 happens when eye movement comes to a
halt because the brain waves slow down. Stage 3 occurs when
slow brain waves, which are called Delta Waves, have some
bouts of small and fast waves. Stage 4 begins when the brain
produces only the Delta Waves or the brain really moves
slower. Stage 3 and 4 are also called in layman’s terms, as
the deep sleep stage. During this stage, it would be
impossible to wake someone up. It’s practically looking at a
dead person who is actually alive and breathing since there
are no eye movements nor muscle activity. According to
psychiatrists, this is the stage when most kids experience
bedwetting – since they just let go of their muscles.
Remember that sleepwalking happens earlier
than the REM or rapid eye movement stage. Sleepwalkers are
actually not acting out their dreams; rather, they are
experiencing a disorder called Sleepwalking Disorder.
Questions regarding this disorder often
boils down to one question – is this sleepwalking disorder
genetic? The answer is yes. It doesn’t matter if a person is
under so much stress for him to engage in sleepwalking. 15%
of people whose family members or relatives experience
walking while sleeping, chances are they will be
sleepwalkers too. If they still don’t believe that they do,
they should just listen to the funny or scary stories that
people tell them about what happened several nights ago.
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