A range of sleeping problems are associated with Parkinson’s disease (PD) and unless they are recognized and tackled effectively, they can give rise to serious consequences. Sleep disorders can manifest as restless sleep, nightmares, vivid dreams, acting out dreams during sleep, and excessive daytime sleepiness. These sleep-related problems can affect the quality of life in PD patients, resulting in fatigue, poor attention, memory deficits, and predisposition to accidents.

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Although insomnia may not be the most debilitating of complaints in patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease, it can nonetheless cause much distress in Parkinson’s patients and the symptoms often aggravate as the disease progresses. Insomnia is the inability to get a good night’s sleep and may be due to :

1. Sleep onset problem where  the patient has difficulty in going off to sleep even though he/she may be extremely tired. This is most often associated with depression or anxiety states.
2. Sleep maintenance difficulty where the patient goes off to sleep easily but wakes up frequently at night. This problem is faced very frequently by Parkinson’s disease patients and they may have abrupt and agitated arousal more than five times at night. This leads to tiredness and excessive daytime sleepiness.
3. Excessive daytime sleepiness is caused by inability to sleep properly at night, most often due to waking up several times at night. Dopaminergic medication as part of Parkinson’s drug therapy also contributes to daytime sleepiness in Parkinson’s disease patients.

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