Abstract

Characterizing the nature of complex nocturnal behaviors is one of the most difficult diagnostic challenges in sleep medicine. Repeated nocturnal paroxysmal events have a broad differential diagnosis, including epileptic seizures, sleep disorders, and others. The factors that facilitate and/or trigger sleep-related paroxysms can be categorized as having genetic and familial predisposition, external factors that disturb the micro and macro structure of sleep (e.g. light, noise), substance abuse and accompanying psychiatric, neurologic and metabolic disorders. Sleep hygiene refers to a list of behaviors, environmental conditions, and other sleep-related factors that can be adjusted as a stand-alone treatment or component of multimodal treatment for patients with insomnia. Sleep hygiene is very important for having a healthy physical and mental life as well as for the treatment of some sleep disorders. Here we report a patient with paroxysmal nocturnal sleep disorder with a different clinical appearance, facilitated by the emergence of a variety of predisposing factors and successfully treated only with sleep hygiene for a few days.

Key words: nocturnal behaviors, sleep hygiene, undefined sleep-wake disorder