Insomnia Causes Symptoms and Treatment

The most common causes of insomnia and the reason for doing this if you can find where either specific cause or at least the overall area which won't be causing your insomnia.

It means that you can the work and make sure energy is put into the right place you can use different techniques, different strategies, different methods that you most life's like getting a great night's sleep after.

Also Read:  Celiac Disease and Gluten Sensitivity

Causes of Insomnia

The emotional causes, the physical causes, the behaviour causes your sleep routine and you sleep environment, those five key areas tend to harbour the most common causes of insomnia.

What keeps you up at night, pondering deep questions, excitement about a big trip, or is it stress about unfinished work an upcoming test or a dreaded family gathering. For many people, this stress is temporary, as its cause is quickly resolved. 

If the very thing keeping you awake was stress about losing sleep, this seemingly unsolvable loop is at the heart of insomnia the world's most common sleep disorder. Almost anything can cause the occasional restless night a snoring partner physical pain or emotional distress.

Extreme sleep deprivation like jet lag can throw off your biological clock wreaking havoc on your sleep schedule. Insomnia is difficulty falling asleep, difficulty staying asleep, poor sleep quality or some kind of combination of those symptoms.

People with insomnia have trouble falling asleep whereas others wake up throughout the night and struggle to fall back asleep and these disturbances typically happen at least three times each week.

Acute insomnia lasts less than a month, whereas chronic insomnia lasts over a month. Insomnia affects both  the quantity and the quality of sleep which makes it hard for individuals to reach the restorative levels of sleep, which eventually causes daytime sleepiness and fatigue and over time feelings of irritability, anxiety, and depression. This can lead to professional and personal problems as well as day-to-day challenges like falling asleep while driving.

Although insomnia can happen without an underlying cause, it can also accompany and worse than other problems like pulmonary diseases, psychiatric conditions, and a whole variety of conditions that might cause pain. Insomnia is also a common side effect of stimulants like caffeine, as well as depressants like alcohol, which can both disrupt the regular sleep cycle.

Finally, in probably most commonly, insomnia can be the result of daily stresses from work or relationships as well as environmental factors like having to work a night shift, or having a newborn baby. 

However, some long-term conditions like respiratory disorders gastrointestinal problems and many others can overpower fatigue. As sleepless nights pile up the bedroom can start to carry associations of restless nights wracked with anxiety come bedtime insomniacs are stressed, so stressed their brains hijack the stress response system. Flooding the body with fight flight or freeze chemicals.

Cortisol and adrenocorticotropic hormone course through the bloodstream increasing heart rate and blood pressure and jolting the body into hyperarousal. In this condition the brain is hunting for potential threats, making it impossible to ignore any slight discomfort or nighttime noise.

When insomniacs finally do fall asleep the quality of their rest is compromised. Your brains primary source of energy is cerebral glucose, and in healthy sleep, your metabolism slows to conserve this glucose for waking hours.

There are a number of biological factors associated with insomnia. Studies have shown that people with insomnia might have heightened levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which plays a role in the process of waking you up every morning.

People with insomnia are also more sensitive to the effects of cortisol, typically waking up at much lower levels of cortisol as compared to the general population.

In addition, insomnia is also associated with reduced levels of estrogen and reduced levels of progesterone, which can happen during menopause. Commonly, people with insomnia will self-medicate with alcohol and benzodiazepines, both of which can be extremely dangerous.

Alcohol abuse can lead to a number of physical and psychological changes that can rapidly worsen the sleep-wake cycle and lead to dependence. similarly, benzodiazepines, especially short-acting ones, can also create dependence and have a high abuse potential, which can actually worsen insomnia if someone tries to stop using them.

Treatment of Insomnia

One method of treatment is getting good sleep hygiene, which includes going to sleep and waking up the same time every day including weekends getting good exercise (but not right before bed), reducing alcohol intake, avoiding daytime naps, avoiding caffeine and smoking in the evening, and not going to sleep hungry.

Another potential treatment is stimulus control which includes using the bed only to sleep rather than a place to watch TV, text, or talk on the phone. It also helps to keep the environment calm by taking away bright lights like a computer or a phone screen and minimizing noise. sometimes,  though, these are unavoidable.

Thes suggestions all help the person associate sleep and only sleep with the bedroom. Also for treatment, there's behaviour therapy which includes relaxation techniques as well as cognitive behavioural therapy to help better manage problems in life stressors.

While these techniques are being used, sometimes medications like melatonin agonists, non-benzodiazepine sedatives, and occasionally benzodiazepines might be prescribed to help with sleep. These medications can often have side effects, though, so they're generally used for less than two months. Usually in combination with the behavioural therapy techniques.  

Insomnia is an inability to get restorative sleep that causes daytime sleepiness and fatigue and can be managed with good sleep hygiene, stimulus control, behaviour therapy and occasionally short courses of medications.

Also Read: Dementia Symptoms Lewy Body