Signs and symptoms of AD include anxiety, headache, nausea, ringing in the ears, blurred vision, flushed skin, and nasal congestion. It can occur shortly after the injury or not until years later.Other autonomic functions may also be disrupted. For example, problems with body temperature regulation mostly occur in injuries at T8 and above. Another serious complication that can result from lesions above T6 is neurogenic shock, which results from an interruption in output from the sympathetic nervous system responsible for maintaining muscle tone in the blood vessels. Without the sympathetic input, the vessels relax and dilate. Neurogenic shock presents with dangerously low blood pressure, low heart rate, and blood pooling in the limbs—which results in insufficient blood flow to the spinal cord and potentially further damage to it. Cervical
Spinal cord injuries at the cervical (neck) level result in full or partial tetraplegia (also called quadriplegia). Depending on the specific location and severity of trauma, limited function may be retained. Additional symptoms of cervical injuries include low heart rate, low blood pressure, problems regulating body temperature, and breathing dysfunction. If the injury is high enough in the neck to impair the muscles involved in breathing, the person may not be able to breathe without the help of an endotracheal tube and mechanical ventilator. Complications
Complications of spinal cord injuries include pulmonary edema, respiratory failure, neurogenic shock, and paralysis below the injury site. In the long term, the loss of muscle function can have additional effects from disuse, including atrophy of the muscle.
Middle-of-the-night insomnia (MOTN) is characterized by having difficulty returning to sleep after waking up during the night or very early in the morning. This kind of insomnia (sleeplessness) is different from initial or sleep-onset insomnia, which consists of having difficulty falling asleep at the beginning of sleep. The disrupted sleep patterns caused by middle-of-the-night insomnia make many sufferers of the condition complain of fatigue the following day. Excessive daytime sleepiness is reported nearly two times higher by individuals with nocturnal awakenings than by people who sleep through the night.Sleep research conducted in the 1990s showed that such waking up during the night may be a natural sleep pattern, rather than a form of insomnia. If interrupted sleep (called "biphasic sleeping" or "bimodal sleep") is perceived as normal and not referred to as "insomnia", less distress is caused and a return to sleep usually occurs after about one hour. Causes
Pain
Pregnancy
Anxiety
Difficulty breathing / sleep apnea
Urge to urinate or defecate
Hunger or thirst
Illness
Shift work
Erratic sleep scheduleNocturnal awakenings are more common in older patients and have been associated with depressive disorders, chronic pain, obstructive sleep apnea, obesity, alcohol consumption, hypertension, gastroesophageal reflux disease, heart disease, menopause, prostate problems, and bipolar disorders. Gastro-intestinal discomfort arising from food that has not been fully cooked, is also a contributor to middle of the night insomnia. Nocturnal awakenings can be mistaken as shift work disorder. Treatment
Middle-of-the-night insomnia is often treated with medication, although currently Intermezzo (zolpidem tartrate sublingual tablets) is the only Food and Drug Administration-approved medication specifically for treating MOTN awakening.