What's Messing With Your Sleep?

It’s not just insomnia. It could be a lesser known sleep disorder that you don’t even know you have.

- Sasha Gonzales

A recent episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians saw model Kendall Jenner reveal her fear of going to sleep because of a condition called sleep paralysis. “I wake up in the middle of the night and I can’t move,” she said in the reality TV show.

It can be frightening. “Sleep paralysis renders a person unable to speak or move just as they are about to fall asleep, or while they are transitioning to the wakeful state,” says Dr Cheryl Kam, a family physician at Mint Medical Centre, who has an interest in sleep disorders.

But sleep paralysis is actually a fairly common sleep disorder, affecting four in 10 people. There are others with less obvious symptoms, which make them harder to spot.

Paradoxical Insomnia (also known as sleep state misperception) 

What it is: “People with paradoxical insomnia believe they’re getting little or no sleep,” says Dr Lim Li Ling, a neurologist and sleep physician at the Singapore Neurology & Sleep Centre, Gleneagles Medical Centre. “They generally overestimate how long they take to fall asleep, and underestimate how much sleep they get. Objectively measured, their sleep quality is normal.”

While it may all be in the sufferer’s mind, the condition becomes a sleep disorder when the misperception becomes ingrained or chronic.