Sleepwalking Experiences Are Different For Everyone

The concept of sleepwalking is very different for each person. There have been basic accounts of children and adults getting up from their sleep and doing things that they don’t remember. There are also more outrageous accounts of people sleepwalking and driving somewhere or committing crimes without remembering anything about it.

There is still a great deal that isn’t known about sleepwalking, but we do know it occurs during the stage of sleep when a person should be dreaming. This gives credit to that fact that people really may not remember what they do while sleepwalking. Some individuals only sleepwalk once in a while and others do it all the time. Parents often lose sleep when their children sleepwalk as they want to protect them from dangers.

Statistically, up to 18% of the population has experienced a sleepwalking episode at one time or another in their life. For children who will outgrow the problem it should go away around the time they go through puberty due to chemical changes in the brain. Boys and men are more likely to suffer from problems with sleepwalking than girls for women.

For those that do sleepwalk regularly, they may continually feel tired. This is because they body doesn’t really get the rest that it should. An episode of sleepwalking can last from a couple of minutes up to a couple of hours. For some people the issues of sleepwalking seem to get continually worse as they get older. Some children with this problem simply outgrow it though as they get older.

Some researchers believe that sleepwalking is the result of a hereditary gene, but this has not been proven. Others believe it has to do with the level of stress that a person has or their diet. Some types of prescription medications have been linked to possibly triggering sleepwalking episodes in people that have never experienced it before. For those that have, it can increase the length of their sleepwalking episodes ore cause them to occur more often.

There has been some research to indicate that sleepwalking is an early sign of mental health problems that a person may experience later in life. However, it is hard to really document this because so many professionals doing the assessments for mental health issues don’t ask about sleepwalking that has occurred in the person’s life. Also, since mental health problems can be heredity it can’t be linked only to the episodes of sleepwalking.