Patients can come to the doctor's observation referring to anxiety and depression reactive to the perception of their inefficiency in carrying out daily activities, or they can report asthenia, lack of mental clarity and ability to concentrate as more disturbing (Lungaresi E. , 2005). Night sleep and daytime naps may not be restful, especially in the form of hypersomnia secondary to sleep apnea.
Other frequent complaints reported by this type of patients are morning headache and difficulties in the sexual sphere. Sometimes they have automatic behaviors, referable to brief intrusions of sleep phases during the wakefulness activity, the so-called microsleeps. It is necessary to differentiate these patients from those who complain of asthenia and reduced mental efficiency and not real drowsiness: in these cases it will be more easily treated, in these cases, patients who are insomniac or depressed or with systemic diseases (iron-deprived anemia, diabetes, hypothyroidism) (Sudhansu Chokroverty. , 2000). (Ferri R. et Al., 1996; Ferri R., 1995).
Hypersomnic patients have a significantly shorter time to fall asleep than normal dormitories, which can be measured with objective methods (multiple sleep latency test) or evaluable with subjective tools such as the Epworth scale.
A rare form of primary hypersomnia that deserves mention is Narcocataplexia which associates excessive daytime sleepiness and sleep strokes often not forewarned or resistable, including other typical symptoms including cataplexy which is constituted by the sudden muscle failure of the whole body. or parts of it (head, jaw) as a result of emotions (laughing, crying, frightening for example). Narcolactic patients may also present with sleep paralysis and hypnagogic or hypnopompic hallucinations.
See also: Insomnia: What it is, Symptoms and Causes of nocturnal and restless legs syndrome
Italian Auxological Institute
