[hra146]

Sleepwalking
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Sleepwalking
Classification & external resources ICD-10 F51.3
ICD-9 307.4

Sleepwalking (also called noctambulism or somnambulism), under the larger category of parasomnias, is a sleep disorder where the sufferer engages in activities that are normally associated with wakefulness while asleep or in a sleeplike state.
Contents
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* 1 Explanation
* 2 Hazards
* 3 Dealing with Sleepwalkers
* 4 Trivia
* 5 See also
* 6 References
* 7 External links

[edit] Explanation

Sleepwalking can affect people of any age. It generally occurs when an individual awakes suddenly from Slow Wave Sleep (SWS or sometimes referred to as "deep sleep"), causing the sleepwalking episode.[citation needed] In children and young adults, up to 25% of the night is spent in SWS.[citation needed] However this decreases as the person ages until none can be measured in the geriatric individual.[citation needed] For this reason, children and young adults (or anyone else with a high amount of SWS), are more likely to be woken up and, for the same reasons, they are witnessed to have many more episodes than the older individuals.[citation needed]

Statistics

* 18% of the world's population is prone to sleepwalking.[1]
* Somewhere between 1% and 16.7% of U.S. children sleepwalk, and juveniles are seen to be those more prone to the activity.[citation needed]
* One study showed that the highest prevalence of sleepwalking was 16.7% for children of 11 to 12 years of age.[citation needed]
* Males are seen to be more likely to sleepwalk than females.[citation needed]

Activities such as eating, bathing, dressing, or even driving cars,[2] whistling, posting on 2+2(?), having sex[2] and committing murder[2] ([1], [2], [3]) have also been recorded as taking place while the subjects are technically asleep. Contrary to popular belief, most cases of sleepwalking do not consist of walking around (without the conscious knowledge of the subject). Most cases of somnambulism occur when the person is awakened (something or someone disturbs their SWS), the person may sit up, look around and immediately go back to sleep. But these kinds of incidences are rarely noticed or reported unless recorded in a sleep clinic.[citation needed]

Sleepwalkers engage in their activities with their eyes open so they can navigate their surroundings, not with their eyes closed and their arms outstretched as parodied in cartoons and Hollywood productions. The victims' eyes may have a glazed or empty appearance and if questioned, the subject will be slow to answer and will be unable to respond in an intelligible manner.



Is that good or bad for me?

could be a "sane" explanation at least...