PREFACE This course covers the main issues a healthcare provider must know about when it comes to sleep and sleep-related disorders. The prevalence of sleep disorders is high in clinical practices, both inpatient and outpatient, and many practitioners do not really know how to handle them. Through studying this course, you will come to understand what constitutes normal sleep and what the different sleep disorders are all about. The diagnosis, manifestations, and management of sleep disorders and sleep-related disorders are covered so you will come to feel competent about how to help individuals suffering from these types of problems. The purpose of chapter one in the course is to understand what constitutes normal sleep, including why people need to sleep in the first place. The circadian rhythm is an important part of the sleep-wake cycle and regulates many aspects of sleep. When a person sleeps, they go through many different sleep stages, which together constitutes the sleep cycle. While the rest of the course is about sleep disorders, this chapter introduces the different sleep disorders and what they mean when it comes to getting quality sleep. Chapter two looks more deeply into the physiology and neuroanatomy of sleep. There are specific brain areas associated with sleep and wakefulness, and there are certain neurotransmitters that are involved with falling asleep and maintaining sleep. There are different EEG patterns associated with the different sleep stages as well. Sleep has a remarkable effect on the respiratory system, the cardiovascular system, and the thermoregulatory system, which are covered as part of this chapter. Chapter three in the course discusses the different ways of evaluating human sleep. The main thing that is used to evaluate sleep is the polysomnography evaluation, which is also called a sleep study. Several parameters are evaluated as part of polysomnography that look at different aspects of sleep. Sleep stage scoring is a way to evaluate the different aspects of the sleep cycle; this is also discussed as part of the chapter.
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