Good sleep is necessary for optimal health and can affect hormone levels, mood and weight.

Common sleep problems, including snoring, sleep apnea, insomnia, sleep deprivation, and restless legs syndrome. The most important sleep disorder that often (not always) presents with snoring is sleep apnoea, which if left undiagnosed and untreated can be life threatening.

The other prominent sleep related condition is narcolepsy which consists of the triad of catalepsy (sudden loss of muscle tone), excessive daytime drowsiness and sleep paralysis).

The most common sleep related problem in clinical practice is stress induced sleep dysfunction, people with mental health symptoms having difficulty in getting to sleep or staying asleep.

More complex problems of sleep include REM sleep behaviour disorder (seen in Parkinson’s disease and other neurodegenerative conditions), in which there is florid acting out of dreams, epilepsy and/or panic disorder in sleep, hypnagogic & hypnopompic hallucinations and vivid dreams.