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r. Shahira Fathi Loza received her MB BCh from Cairo University Medical School in 1979 and started basic training in Psychiatry at the Behman Hospital after graduating. During this time she received her Diploma in Psychiatry and Neurology. In 1996 her interest in Sleep Medicine led her to further her studies at the Cleveland Clinic, Ohio and Stanford, California. In 1997 she successfully completed the course of Sleep Medicine at Stanford School of Sleep Medicine and received the Diploma of Sleep Medicine from French University, Montpellier, France. Currently, Dr. Loza holds the position of Director of the Cairo Center for Sleep Disorders and the Neurophysiology unit at the Behman Hospital.
CWM: An increasing number of people seem to be experiencing sleep disorders, what do you attribute this to?
SL: Recently, a lot of this can be attributed to the invasion of technology and change of our lifestyles. People often have to work varying shifts, suffer jet-lag from high levels of travel, and of course, our growing addiction to computers, Internet surfing, and television. These stimulate our senses, especially late at night when our bodies should be winding down. We also have anxiety and stress, but these have always been issues to contend with.
How would you classify and describe the main types of sleep disorders?
Although this is a relatively new speciality, there are actually 84 various disorders that have been identified. The main characteristics are defined as sleeping too little( insomnia), sleeping too much( hypersomnia), or experiencing disturbances and abnormal activity like sleepwalking.
24 hrs). The Circadian rhythm, present in humans and most other animals, is an internal clock that is synchronized to light-dark cycles and other cues in an organism’ s environment. This internal clock accounts for waking up at the same time every day even without an alarm clock. It is important to note that Circadian rhythms can be disrupted by external causes such as jet lag or working night shifts and physiological causes such as age related rhythm disorders.
Strange things that can occur during sleep are called‘ parasomnias’ of which somnambulism, or sleepwalking and nightmares are the most common. The first occurs during deep sleep, the latter occurs during Rapid Eye Movement sleep( REM sleep) of the sleep cycle, and a person can actually carry out quite normal routine activities. Sleep walking episodes can range from around a minute up to half an hour or more, and the sleepwalker rarely has any memory of what happened. It tends to be more prevalent in children, but decreases with entry into adolescence. It is important to keep any objects that could cause harm well locked away if you have a child with this condition. As sleep deprivation can exacerbate this it is important to ensure that the sufferer gets enough quality rest. Nightmares are usually associated with psychological problems.
Allowing too much light in your surroundings when you need to get to sleep is another factor in creating insomnia. Hypersomnia, or excessive sleeping, is a condition that presents another set of problems, the inability to stay awake during normal waking hours can be dangerous, especially when driving or using machinery, apart from the general inconvenience of dropping off unexpectedly.
What causes the various sleep disorders?
Though most causes of insomnia are due to psychological causes, 90 % of excessive sleepiness is caused by organic or medical problems. The most common are sleep related breathing disorders, Obstructive Sleep Apnea, where the patient has respiratory pauses lasting for 10 seconds or longer followed by loud snoring. The cause is a mechanical obstruction in the upper airway that only occurs during sleep. Typically, patients are unaware of these pauses and snoring, symptoms reported are excessive daytime sleepiness, irritability, and associated hypertension among others.
There can also be a disturbance to the natural Circadian rhythm,( Circa = approximate, dian =
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