What causes insomnia? Why does this phenomenon prevail over a person? Specialists in the field of medicine note that a complete or partial lack of sleep can have various causes. Let's talk more about them, as well as about the most effective and proven ways to deal with this disease.
Why insomnia is dangerous
Before figuring out what causes insomnia, it is worth determining the degree of danger of this phenomenon to the human body.
Insomnia is essentially the lack of sleep, that is, a normal night's rest. The nervous system at the same time begins to loosen, as a result of which the person becomes irritable. Of course, nighttime sleep deprivation entails drowsiness in the daytime, as well as a significant decrease in the level of performance.
Ultimately, the problem under consideration, acquiring a chronic form, entails certain difficulties in the functioning of the body, and also negatively affects the general well-being of a person, the work of his cardiovascular, endocrine systems and the brain.
How to determine the development of insomnia
How to understand that insomnia begins to take a chronic form? Specialists in the field of medicine distinguish certain signs that indicate the approaching danger to human health.
First of all, a person should start to sound the alarm if he notices that he cannot fall asleep quickly even if his body is exhausted by physical exertion. Dangerous symptoms also include the inability of a person to plunge into the kingdom of Morpheus for a long time. As a rule, in this situation one can only fall asleep in the morning, just before it is time to get up to work or to college.
A serious sign that insomnia begins to take on a chronic form is that superficial sleep becomes characteristic of a person. In this case, he can easily wake up from any rustle or the slightest noise that has arisen around.
If a person wakes up during the night, this is also a serious cause for concern. As a rule, during breaks between such stages of sleep, he cannot sleep for a long time, tossing and turning, and distracted by any noise. Sometimes it lasts until dawn.
What causes insomnia in humans? Let's talk further about the main causes of the phenomenon in more detail.
Sleep Hygiene
Today there is such a thing as sleep hygiene. It includes a certain list of factors that somehow affect the quality of night rest. These include: stiffness of the bed, cleanliness and quality of bedding, freshness of air, temperature in the room, etc.
Practice shows that a person has the ability to wake up in those cases when sunlight enters his room, but this is possible only in the morning or in the daytime.
In violation of sleep hygiene, insomnia can take various forms. In the case of its development, a person may experience problems with the process of falling asleep, his rest may be intermittent, and awakenings, as a rule, occur at a fairly early time, which subsequently causes a feeling of overwhelming throughout the day.
Insomnia under stress
As practice shows, quite often stressful situations are the cause of the development of insomnia, which can subsequently acquire a chronic form.
Often, suspicious people are prone to exaggerating the problems that arise in life, they carefully and fairly long think about them, not realizing how detrimental this affects the state of the nervous system. It is worth noting that the representatives of the fair sex are most prone to this type of behavior, therefore, on this basis, the problem under consideration arises, as a rule, precisely for them.
In fact, everyone is stressed. It can be triggered by a variety of situations: a sudden change of weather, illness of a loved one, unrequited love, the collapse of certain plans and other things, but the result is always the same - the development of insomnia, which gradually takes on a chronic form and becomes dangerous for the human body. This happens because, when happening in a person’s life, stressful situations make a disorder in the human nervous system, as a result of which certain parts of the brain that are responsible for sleep quality do not work at the right time. As a result, the body disrupts the production of sleep hormone and stimulates the production of adrenaline-like components, the action of which is aimed at stimulating the human nervous system.
How to determine that insomnia arose precisely because of stress? As practice shows, in this case it is often accompanied by a fear of the inability to fall asleep, as well as the superficiality of a night's rest. It often happens that with this type of insomnia during the day, people experience pain in the sternum, fainting, dizziness, as well as trembling limbs and general weakness. In people suffering from insomnia during stress, the REM sleep phase predominates, during which nightmares and disturbing dreams can occur. As a result of this, a person begins to wake up more and more often during the night.
Nervous system diseases
Quite often, insomnia becomes the result of some health problems in the human nervous system. This happens as a result of the fact that when a malfunction occurs in its operation, the mechanism of the correct interaction of the centers of sleep and inhibition becomes imperfect. As a result, the balance is lost and serious sleep disturbances occur.
The features of insomnia arising from disturbances in the functioning of the nervous system are, first of all, intermittent night rest, as well as frequent awakenings and difficulty falling asleep. Sometimes it even happens that a person can wake up at least three times a night or even cannot fall asleep after one of the awakenings.
Malnutrition
Not all modern people monitor their diet, and certain violations in the daily diet can cause insomnia. Among these, first of all, is the habit of overeating before bedtime, because it leads to prolonged retention of food in the stomach until the morning. As a result of this, although a slow, but still a process of digestion of the eaten foods takes place, which is why blood rises to the stomach and intestines. The consequence of this is a feeling of heaviness in the stomach, which a person can experience both at night and in the morning. This is due to the fact that at night digestion in the body is very poor, it rather resembles the fermentation of food.
The characteristic features of insomnia caused by overeating at bedtime are sleep disturbance, its sensitivity, as well as the constant tossing and turning that a person performs during rest: at this time he is simply trying to take a comfortable pose.
Somatic diseases
Diseases of the body, which are commonly called somatic, also contribute to the development of insomnia. In particular, this concerns such health problems as arrhythmia, peptic ulcer, prostate hypertrophy, arthrosis. It is important to understand that even short-term ailments can cause problems with falling asleep, and if we talk about chronic diseases, especially cardiological ones, they can cause a malfunction of circadian rhythms, as well as prolonged sleep disturbance.
Among the main features of this type of insomnia is the presence of anxious thoughts at the time of falling asleep, as well as interruption of rest due to bouts of pain. As practice shows, people suffering from insomnia caused by somatic diseases often experience drowsiness throughout the day.
Negative mood for sleeping in your bed
Special attention should be paid to insomnia in case of neurosis, which often arises from the fact that a person is subconsciously not tuned to rest in his own bed. There can be many reasons for this, but quite often this happens after a divorce from the second half or because of a fear of unwanted intimacy with a spouse. Sometimes people are afraid to see a nightmare or are afraid of death, which can happen at night, this also often causes a lack of normal sleep. All this is due to the fact that instead of calming down, the nervous system begins to be excited from certain thoughts, as a result of which sleep is simply impossible.
Signs that a person suffers from insomnia in a neurosis is not only the difficulty of falling asleep, in which the process of withdrawal to the kingdom of Morpheus can last about 3-4 hours, but also a regular vision of nightmares. As a result, a person who slept in this mode experiences a feeling of fatigue and frustration in the morning. Its performance in the daytime is reduced.
As practice shows, this form of insomnia is usually associated with a certain place, when changing which the problem disappears by itself.
Excessive physical activity
Health professionals strongly recommend that sporting events be completed no later than 7 p.m. After doing an evening jog or other sporting activities, a person should easily have dinner at home, relax and go to bed. People who neglect these rules often encounter insomnia.
After training, it is advisable to drink a glass of warm milk or a cup of herbal decoction - such drinks calm the human nervous system, relax it and set it on rest. At this time, the use of alcohol and smoking tobacco is strictly prohibited.
Circadian rhythm disturbance
The cause of insomnia can be a violation of the usual circadian rhythm, as well as a malfunction of the biological clock. As a rule, this happens when a person flies to a country with a different time zone. Owls are best adapted to such changes, but larks begin to experience real difficulties with normal rest.
All this happens because the human body, flying through several time zones, begins to experience difficulties with the production of hormones, glucose. Under such conditions, the body cannot prepare for sleep at night - it is still full of energy. Gradually, this leads to insomnia.
By the way, working at night is also often the cause of difficulties with the process of falling asleep - preparing for bed begins much later than usual.
As for the features of this type of insomnia, one of these, first of all, is sleepiness in the daytime, as a result of which a person's working capacity, attention level and memory acuity are reduced. It often happens that to people suffering from this, sleep comes only in the morning.
Medication
After antibiotics, insomnia can occur only if they have components that excite the nervous system of the body. In the presence of such a problem, a person has a decrease in the duration of the deep sleep phase, weight loss, and also the inferiority of rest.
It is important to understand that a similar effect can be observed in the case of excessive consumption of coffee, alcohol, cocaine, amphetamine and other substances that stimulate the nervous system.
The cause of insomnia can be antidepressants, monoamine oxidase inhibitors, as well as drugs used in bronchial asthma. Often there is insomnia after a stroke. This is usually associated with the use of drugs whose action is aimed at treating cardiovascular diseases.
In practice, it often happens that people begin to suffer from insomnia after quitting smoking or drinking alcohol, especially if a person says goodbye to such habits suddenly. In this case, the problem becomes debilitating.
Insomnia after chemotherapy is also a common phenomenon that occurs in almost all cancer patients who have undergone appropriate treatment. It arises not only due to the effects of drugs, but also against a background of depression, gastrointestinal upsets and exhausting pains.
Old age
It is known that with age, the physical activity of a person decreases markedly, as a result of which people simply cease to need a long sleep. Despite this, the psychological need to sleep for a certain period of a day (about 7-8 hours) remains.
How to deal with insomnia after 50 in women and men? Specialists in the field of medicine strongly recommend strengthening the nervous system of the body. For this purpose, the use of sleeping pills is not recommended, which have a negative effect on the condition of the whole organism.
The main signs that insomnia is caused by advanced age include early awakenings and the same sudden falling asleep. In addition to all this, drowsiness is observed in a person throughout the day, making him less efficient.
By the way, women who have crossed the 50-year-old age barrier also have insomnia, the main reason for which is menopause. Statistics show that the problem worries every third woman who entered this period. As a rule, the main cause of this problem is apathy, as well as a depressive state that depresses the fair sex too much during menopause. Why is insomnia with menopause the most difficult? This is due to the fact that, as a rule, it does not come alone, but is accompanied by a rapid heartbeat, increased sweating, which is especially pronounced at night, an increase in anxiety, and also distraction and frustration. ” Experts recommend treating this type of insomnia in combination with taking measures to eliminate other health problems.
Heredity
Surprisingly, in some cases, the cause of insomnia can be a hereditary factor, because scientists have long established that the tendency to this problem can be transmitted from parents to children.
In this case, the main reason for the development of a hereditary problem is associated with the production of an insufficient level of sleep hormone, as well as with a low level of work of the sleep center located in the cerebellum.
In order to control this problem and its probable elimination, somnological experts strongly recommend keeping a separate diary, on the pages of which it is necessary to make notes about nutrition and drinking throughout the day. In such a diary, it is also recommended to write down all stressful situations and identify other factors that could one way or another affect the ability of the nervous system to relax at night. An analysis of the notes helps establish the true causes of insomnia.
Which doctor to contact
Many Russians are tormented by the same question: which doctor should I consult if I have insomnia?
In fact, the first steps in the fight against this problem can be made by visiting a cardiologist, therapist, neurologist, psychiatrist, psychologist and somnologist - a specialist whose competence includes solving all the problems associated with sleep.
As for the therapist, he begins to determine the causes of the problem by measuring pressure and heart rate. As practice shows, insomnia with pressure (hypertension) is a fairly common phenomenon that disappears when the underlying cause is eliminated.
Cardiologists are able to determine whether sleep disturbance is a consequence of cardiovascular disease, and neurologists determine the state in which the nervous system is located.
Moreover, it is noted that when observing insomnia, it is necessary to consult a psychologist, since her problem often lies in the human subconscious and consists in anxiety or anxiety. It is usually possible to solve it without the use of medication. It is enough to observe general hygiene of sleep.
If a person has sleep disturbance, then the most correct way out will be his appeal to the somnological center. , , , .
, . , .
, , , : , , .
, , , . .
. , , . - , . , . . , , .
. , . , , , , . , . , Jarrow Formulas Sleep Optimizer, " ", "", Relaxis, "- -".