讲座，讲述三种睡眠问题：睡眠呼吸中断、忽然入睡、失眠。

Sleep Disorders

So, is everyone awake? I guess that’s the question at the start of an early-morning lecture about sleep. Seriously, how many of you feel you didn’t get enough sleep last night? Raise your hands. Hmm. About a third of you. That’s interesting, because it shows that you are not so difficult from the population in general. About 30% of adults say they frequently don’t feel rested they wake up in the morning. And why is that? Well, in most cases it’s because they stayed up too late partying or watching TV. But in a small percentage of cases, they could be suffering from a sleep disorder, a condition that interferes with a person’s ability to sleep normally. There are many different kinds of sleep disorders but the three that I want to describe today are called sleep apnea, narcolepsy, and insomnia.

Okay, the first disorder I listed is sleep apnea, that's A-P-N-E-A. people with sleep apnea stop breathing, sometimes for ten seconds or longer. And not just once, it can happen several hundred times a night! Each time this happens, they wake up and go right back to sleep, so their sleep is constantly interrupted, but in the morning they don't remember waking up. They just feel tired and sleepy.

Then how do you know if you have this problem? The usual symptoms are heavy breathing, and snoring, combined with feeling tired all the time. The cause of this problem is that air can't go into and out of the nose or mouth, usually because the throat is too relaxed. Consequently the treatment is fairly simple: the person wears a soft mask attached to a machine that helps to regulate his or her breathing throughout the night, in extreme cases of apnea, surgery may be necessary. You know a friend of mine waited for thirty years before his sleep apnea was finally diagnosed properly! Now he is happier than ever! So if your roommate or a family member snores a lot and appears to be sleepy all the time, they may have sleep apnea and you might want to send them to a sleep specialist.

The second sleep disorder that I want to describe today is called narcolepsy. That's spelled N-A-R-C-O-L-E-P-S-Y. Perhaps you've seen a movie in which people are sitting at the table, eating and talking, and suddenly one person just falls over; perhaps his face falls into his soup. it's funny in a movie, but in reality this could be a symptom or narcolepsy. Narcoleptic persons get sudden attacks or sleep, in the middle of the day, any time, any place. They can't control it, they simply fall asleep for brief periods of time. By the way, this disorder appears to be particularly frequent among students enrolled in eight A.M. classes. But seriously, narcolepsy can be quite scary. The cause in high levels of certain chemicals in the part of the brain that regulates sleep. Once narcolepsy is diagnosed, it's usually treated successfully with medication.

……