Causes of Sleep Walking

The Causes of Sleep Walking, Is it safe?


Walking when you are asleep is a fairly common sleep disorder and as long as you are not walking around at any great heights and do not have many obstacles in your way it can be pretty harmless in most cases.




Walking when you are asleep is a fairly common sleep disorder and as long as you are not walking around at any great heights and do not have many obstacles in your way it can be pretty harmless in most cases.



What are the Causes of Sleep Walking?

Sleepwalking happens when an individual is walking or performing otherwise normal actions while they are completely asleep and not aware of what is happening.

Sleepwalking occurs during slow wave sleep and for some reason a variety of behaviours are initiated resulting in the individual walking in their sleep.
During REM, Rapid Eye Movement sleep, the sleepwalking behaviour is shown. The lack of a chemical in the dream phase of sleep initiates this behaviour in affected individuals. Generally, when individuals are in REM sleep the body produces a body paralysing chemical. So, no matter how crazy your dreams you won’t be moving around and harmed in any way because the body is paralysed. However, individuals who sleepwalk lack this paralysing chemical and as a result walk around or perform other actions in their sleep. There are a handful of various reasons for the problem of sleepwalking some of which include:


Rapid Eye Movement disorders
Alcohol abuse
Drug abuse
Fatigue
Anxiety
Stress
Worry
Former lack of sleep
Current medical conditions
According to some recent research in Switzerland, sleepwalking could also be a genetic disorder.


But as in all sleep disorders you should always take the attitude of, better being safe than sorry and getting checked out by your doctor or health practitioner.
 

Sleep Problem