Arousals and aircraft noise - environmental disorders of sleep and health in terms of sleep medicine.

World wide rules for sleep staging originate to 1967. Since then many investigations aimed to give numbers for the degree of sleep disturbances due to air traffic noise. But the variables used, such as the amount of relative sleep stages, total sleep time, or sleep efficiency, could not explain impairment in health and performance sufficiently. The beginning of the eighties has given new insight into the restorative functions of sleep, according to sleep fragmentation by micro-arousals. These are originating in autonomous dysfunctions during sleep, leading to non-restorative sleep. Environmentally related sleep disturbances are described, EEG and vegetative (micro)-arousals, and the actual knowledge in sleep medicine is given in terms of the international classification of sleep disorders (ICSD). The effects on health, and disturbed performance capacity during the day are shown by self ratings of 160 patients. Elevated metabolic rate caused by micro-arousal and/or insomnia, may play an additional role in health impairment.