People with a sleep behavior disorder called REM do not have the usual lack of muscle tone that takes place during rapid eye movement or REM sleep, enabling them to act out their dreams. Sometimes, the movement can be violent, causing injury to the person itself or to their bed partner. The disorder is approximately to occur in 0.5 percent of adults.
The study’s author, Ronald B. Postuma, MD, MSc, said that until present, he and his co-researchers do not know much about the risk factors for the disorder, except the fact that the disorder is more common in men and in older adults. Postuma is with the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) in Montreal and a member of the American Academy of Neurology. Postuma further claimed that since it is a rare disorder, it was difficult to gather information about enough patients for a full study. In fact, Postuma and his team worked with 13 institutions in 10 countries to get a completely analyse the disorder.
The disorder can likewise be a forerunner to neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s disease and a kind of dementia. Studies have revealed that more than 50 percent of people with REM sleep behavior disorder continue to develop a neurodegenerative disorder after several years and even decades.
Due to the said correlation, the researchers claimed that they wanted to further investigate to determine whether the risk factors for REM sleep behavior disorder were similar to those for Parkinson’s disease or dementia.
The results were mixed. While smoking has found to be a shielding factor for Parkinson’s disease, people who smoked were found to be more possibly to develop REM sleep behavior disorder. Meanwhile, exposure to pesticide is a risk factor for both disorders. Studies have presented that people who drink caffeinated drinks are less possibly to develop Parkinson’s disease. However, the study found no relationship between drinking coffee and REM sleep behavior disorder.
The study includes 347 people with REM sleep behavior disorder and another 347 people who did not have the disorder. 218 of which had other sleep disorders and some 129 had no sleep disorders.
Those participants with REM sleep behavior disorder were 43 percent more possibly to be smokers, with 64 percent of those with the disorder having ever smoked, compared to 56 percent of those without the disorder. Participants were 59 percent more possibly to have had a head injury with loss of consciousness from the past, 67 percent were more possibly to have worked as farmers and more than twice as possibly to have been exposed to pesticides through work. Also, those with the disorder had lesser years of education, with an average 11.1 years, compared to 12.7 years for those without the disorder.
In such circumstances of rare sleep disorder, natural sleep remedies seems to be far impossible to resolve the problem. Further studies are definitely needed for the treatment of such disorder.
Image Source:
http://brainandspine.titololawoffice.com/uploads/image/Smoking.jpg
No comments:
Post a Comment