"Should conceited fools, however, censure me, then let love for my profession steel me against them, so that I remain steadfast without regard for age, for reputation, or for honor" Maimonides prayer.
(Maimonides -1135 - 1204- was a physician and philosopher at the court of Saladin -Kurd dynasty which reigned over Egypt and Syria-)
... Beyond the somnologic problematics themselves (insomnia, sleepiness) our experience leads us to formulate, here, some hypotheses about the implications of sleep in general medicine. They result from the observation of some pathological situations which hold the medical thought process in check.
They concern numerous functional disorders (migraine, colics ...), and some charts situated on the border between psychology and physiology (like spasmophilia, fibromyalgia or the chronic fatigue syndrome).
These symptoms are disabling, capricious, worrying... but they all finally heal without sequellae.
Taking the implications of sleep in these still misunderstood pathologies into account should allow to restore the basis of a more constructive dialogue between doctor and patient.
The concept of functional sleep insufficiency that we suggest in the section about "general medicine and sleep", can help to take better care of a great variety of these disorders that have in common the clinical characteristics of an unefficient sleep.
Neologisms suggested by "Sleep and General Medicine" :
Somnology; Somnologist; Somnicology; Somnotoxic; Hypo-sleep; Somnosomatic; Hypo-sleep syndrome; Nap, user’s manual; Somnication; False True sick person; True False sick person.
Because of the absence of a detectable cause, they are often considered of "psycho-somatic" origin. It is then considered that the psychological ground is the engine of the symptoms.
By définition, their intensity goes together with the degree of resistance, or of "deafness" of the sick person.
Spontaneous recovery is the rule but some clinical forms that are disabling to 100% can be described as "malignant". ( COTOREP (Technical Commission for Professional Orientation and Reclassification), long term career interruption).
The main science-validated somnications are :
[1] We prefer the terms of somnology and somnologist, which are still absent from the dictionaries rather than "hypnology" and "hypnologist", which evoke, to our minds, too much the (quite limited) field of hypnosis (which is a transitional state of consciousness between wake and sleep).