The most common sleep disorders are insomnia, sleep breathing disorders, hypersomnia, circadian rhythm disorders, parasomnias, and sleep-related movement disorders. They have different causes, so they require different treatments.
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Insomnia
This is the most common sleep disorder. It can be short-term (then it lasts from a few days to a maximum of 4 weeks) or chronic (then it lasts more than a month). Symptoms include difficulty falling asleep, waking up prematurely, or waking up frequently during the night.
Breathing disorders during sleep
This group includes m.in. sleep apnea. A person who struggles with it experiences interruptions in breathing during sleep, which results in fatigue during the day.
Hypersomnia
This is called excessive sleepiness. An example is narcolepsy, in which a person falls asleep during the day in an uncontrolled manner. We can also talk about hypersomnia when sleep is long and does not give a sense of rest.
Circadian arrhythmias
Here, for example, we are dealing with problems with falling asleep before 3-4 a.m. or falling asleep very early in the evening.
Parasomnia
By this term we mean undesirable behaviors, e.g. nightmares, sleepwalking or sleep paralysis (the inability to move while maintaining consciousness). Some parasomnias, such as sleepwalking, are particularly common in children.
Sleep-related movement disorders
The most popular of these disorders is restless legs syndrome. A person then experiences unpleasant sensations in the legs, which force him to move them. We can also include nocturnal muscle cramps, i.e. painful cramps (most often of the calf muscles) that lead to awakenings.