Sleep is an essential part of life, they are hours of rest that the body and mind need to follow the routine. What happens when you can’t sleep? Insomnia significantly affects anyone, daily life seems to be on forced pause when we have hours or days without sleep, comes the lack of concentration, irritability, can even trigger other ailments.
What is insomnia?
Insomnia is a very common disorder that affects the quality of sleep of the person, this means that the rest time is usually irregular, even null, in more serious cases that those affected do not manage to sleep.
Agrippnia or insomnia can be seen in many ways, since it is talked about when people cannot fall asleep. Once they are in bed, they may have a hard time achieving “normal sleep” or they may have many interruptions of it. Likewise, waking up much earlier than planned because you can not continue sleeping, is part of this disorder.
An interesting fact is that, although millions of people in the world have some manifestation of sleep problems, very few are those who really seek to treat this disorder with the routine to sleep. It could well be said that insomnia becomes normal for the lives of many.
What do insomnia symptoms look like?
Everyone at some stage of our lives has suffered from not being able to sleep enough, this may be due to situations such as stress from work. In addition to studying or for an important event that manages to blur us, for which, we experience short cycles of insomnia. Although they make us feel little more tired, it does not harm our lives much as it really is for people who do suffer from severe insomnia.
If in your day to day you experience symptoms such as: difficulty falling asleep, waking up several times at night, not feeling rested, tiredness, drowsiness during the day, irritability, sadness or depression, difficulty concentrating and constant worry about not being able to sleep well, you may be suffering from insomnia.
Causes
The causes of insomnia vary according to the age, lifestyle and health of people. The most frequent causes are:
Lifestyle: The lifestyle of people has a lot to do with the conditions that appear, therefore, it is not at all strange that sleep is also affected by how we live. Too much work, exams, financial, family or medical problems can take away valuable hours of sleep. The constant stress of thinking too much about the situations that overwhelm us, generates insomnia.
Bad eating habits: Well they say that “everything we eat affects us” Eating habits and insomnia are more connected than we sometimes think. If we eat an unbalanced diet or with excesses such as nicotine, alcohol or coffee, we probably suffer from heartburn or reflux, altering our sleep.
Age: Lack of sleep can come at any age, but it’s more likely that as you get older you lose more sleep. With age the sleeping routine changes drastically, the clock is advanced, therefore, insomnia can affect significantly if we do not take necessary measures so that this does not happen. Good health and physical activity brings great benefits in sleep.
Medications: Some medications alter the way you sleep, this is because they contain substances such as caffeine which is a stimulant, which can take away sleep. Antidepressants, decongestants, allergy medicines and painkillers can affect you.
Diseases: The conditions suffered by the person with insomnia have a lot to do with the disorder. It is known that patients with pulmonary, cardiovascular, neurological and endocrine diseases are prone to insomnia, as well as people with anxiety disorders, depression or other mental health problems.
Other causes: Environmental factors can also affect the sleep routine, schedule changes, too hot or very cold in the room, excessive use of technological devices, even not having a normal rest schedule can lower the quality of sleep.
Perhaps one of the main questions that all ask is the quality of sleep.
How is insomnia cured?
Perhaps one of the main questions that all people who suffer from insomnia ask themselves is, How to cure it? Let’s start with the basics, it is what specialists and studies recommend. Just like everything in life, insomnia also has a solution if we manage to create good sleep hygiene, this is nothing more than learning a new routine that achieves a necessary balance in the life of the sufferer of insomnia.
The first thing will be to determine the cause of insomnia by medical part in order to find what could be interfering with the quality of sleep.
If insomnia is being caused by medications, more specific problems such as mental health disorders or illnesses, your doctor is in charge of recommending a treatment that does not interfere with your other conditions.
However, most treatments for insomnia are based on creating good sleep hygiene, for this you should follow simple guidelines:
- Do not overexpose yourself to technological devices before going to sleep, also, do not use tablets, smartphones or computers in bed.
- Have a fixed schedule to go to bed, although, you should try not to go to bed until you are sleepy.
- Lead a more active and healthy life.
- Do not consume caffeine, alcohol or smoke excessively.
- Eat dinner at least two hours before going to sleep.
- Make your room a cozy space in which you would like to rest (minimize light and noise)
Only in specific cases can specialists recommend pharmacological treatment. It is not suggested for any reason that the patient with insomnia self-medicate, since it can aggravate his condition.
