What causes insomnia? Why does this phenomenon overcome a person? Experts in the field of medicine note that the complete or partial lack of sleep can have various causes. Let's talk further about them, as well as about the most effective and proven ways to deal with this disease.
Why insomnia is dangerous
Before finding out what causes insomnia, it is worth determining the degree of danger of this phenomenon for the human body.
Insomnia is essentially a 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, sleep deprivation at night entails daytime sleepiness, 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 brain.
How to identify the development of insomnia
How to understand that insomnia begins to take on a chronic form? Specialists in the field of medicine identify certain signs that indicate the approach of danger to human he alth.
First of all, a person should start sounding 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 realm of Morpheus for a long time. As a rule, in this situation, it is possible to fall asleep only in the morning, just before it is time to get up for work or college.
A serious sign that insomnia is beginning to take on a chronic form is that a person becomes characterized by superficial sleep. 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, in the intervals between such stages of sleep, he cannot fall asleep for a long time, tossing and turning and being distracted by any noise. Sometimes it lasts until dawn.
What causes insomnia in people? Let's talk further about the main causes of the phenomenon in more detail.
Impaired 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. Some of these include: bed stiffness, cleanliness and qualitybed linen, air freshness, room temperature, etc.
Practice shows that a person tends to wake up when the sun's rays fall into his room, but this is possible only in the morning or in the daytime.
When sleep hygiene is violated, insomnia can take on various forms. If it develops, 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 weakness throughout the day.
Stress insomnia
As practice shows, quite often stressful situations cause the development of insomnia, which can subsequently become chronic.
Often suspicious people tend to exaggerate the problems that arise in life, they carefully and for quite a long time think about them, not realizing how detrimental this affects the state of the nervous system. It is worth noting that the fair sex is most prone to this type of behavior, therefore, on this basis, the problem in question arises, as a rule, for them.
In fact, everyone is stressed. It can be provoked by a variety of situations: a sudden change in weather, illness of a loved one, unrequited love, the collapse of certain plans and other things, but the result of this is always the same - the development of insomnia, which gradually acquireschronic form and becomes dangerous for the human body. This happens because, occurring in a person's life, stressful situations bring discord into the work of the human nervous system, as a result of which certain parts of the brain responsible for the quality of sleep do not work at the right time. As a result, the body disrupts the production of the sleep hormone and stimulates the production of adrenaline-like components, the action of which is aimed at excitation of 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 of the limbs and general weakness. In people suffering from insomnia under stress, the phase of REM sleep predominates, during which nightmares and disturbing dreams can occur. As a result, the person begins to wake up more and more often during the night.
Diseases of the nervous system
Quite often, insomnia is the result of some he alth problems of the human nervous system. This happens as a result of the fact that in the event of failures in its operation, the mechanism for the correct interaction of the centers of sleep and inhibition becomes imperfect. As a result, balance is lost and serious sleep disturbances occur.
Features of insomnia caused by disruption of the nervoussystems are, above all, the discontinuity of 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 cannot fall asleep at all after one of the awakenings.
Unhe althy diet
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 morning. As a result of this, although a slow, but still process of digestion of the food eaten occurs, due to which blood rises to the stomach and intestines. The consequence of this is a feeling of heaviness in the abdomen, which a person can experience both at night and in the morning. This is due to the fact that at night the digestion in the body is very poor, it rather resembles the fermentation of food.
Characteristic features of insomnia caused by overeating before going to bed are restlessness of sleep, its sensitivity, as well as the constant tossing and turning that a person makes during rest: at this time he just tries to take a comfortable position for him.
Somatic diseases
Diseases of the body, which are commonly called somatic, also contribute to the development of insomnia. This is especially true for such he alth problems as arrhythmia, peptic ulcer, prostatic hypertrophy, arthrosis. It is important to understand that even short-term ailmentscan cause problems with falling asleep, and if we talk about diseases of the chronic type, especially cardiological, they can cause disruption of circadian rhythms, as well as prolonged sleep disturbance.
Among the main features of this type of insomnia is the presence of disturbing 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 attitude to sleep in your bed
Special attention should be paid to insomnia in neurosis, which often occurs due to the fact that a person is not subconsciously set to rest in his own bed. There can be many reasons for this, but quite often it happens after a divorce from a significant other or because of fear of unwanted intimacy with a spouse. Sometimes people are afraid to see a nightmare or have a fear of death, which can happen at night, this also often becomes the reason for the lack of normal sleep. All this is due to the fact that instead of calming down, the nervous system begins to be excited by certain thoughts, as a result of which sleep is simply impossible.
Signs that a person is tormented by insomnia with neurosis is not only the difficulty of falling asleep, in which the process of retreat to the kingdom of Morpheus can last about 3-4 hours, but also the regular vision of nightmares. As a result, a person who slept in such a mode experiences a feelingfatigue and weakness in the morning. His daytime performance is reduced.
As practice shows, this form of insomnia is associated, as a rule, with a certain place, when changing which the problem disappears by itself.
Excessive physical activity
He alth professionals strongly recommend that sporting activities end no later than 7 p.m. After an evening run or other sports activities, a person should have a light dinner at home, relax and go to bed. People who neglect these rules often experience 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 up for rest. At this time, the use of alcoholic beverages and tobacco smoking is strictly prohibited.
Journalism
The cause of insomnia can be a violation of the usual daily rhythm, as well as a failure of the biological clock. As a rule, this happens when a person flies to a country with a different time zone. Owls are the best adapted to these changes, but larks are beginning to experience real difficulties with normal rest.
All this happens because the human body, having flown 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 stillfull 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 - preparation for sleep begins much later than usual.
As for the peculiarities of this type of insomnia, a number of those, first of all, include daytime drowsiness, resulting in a decrease in human performance, attention level and memory sharpness. It often happens that for people suffering from this, sleep comes only in the morning.
Medications
After antibiotics, insomnia can occur only if they contain components that excite the nervous system of the body. In the presence of such a problem, a person experiences a decrease in the duration of the deep sleep phase, weight loss, as well as inadequate rest.
It is important to understand that a similar effect can be observed in the case of excessive use of coffee, alcohol, cocaine, amphetamines and other substances that stimulate the nervous system.
Insomnia can be caused by antidepressants, monoamine oxidase inhibitors, and asthma medications. It is not uncommon to experience insomnia after a stroke. This is due, as a rule, to the intake of drugs, the action of which is aimed at the treatment of cardiovascular diseases.
In practice, it often happens that people begin to suffer from insomnia after quitting smoking or drinking alcoholic beverages, in particularif a person says goodbye to such habits suddenly. In this case, the problem becomes debilitating.
Insomnia after chemotherapy is also a common occurrence that occurs in almost all cancer patients who have undergone appropriate treatment. It occurs not only due to the effects of drugs, but also against the background of depression, gastrointestinal disorders and debilitating pain.
Old age
It is known that with age, the physical activity of a person noticeably decreases, as a result of which people simply cease to need long sleep. Despite this, the psychological need to sleep for a certain period of the day (about 7-8 hours) remains.
How to deal with insomnia after 50 in women and men? Medical experts strongly recommend strengthening the nervous system of the body. For this purpose, the use of sleeping pills that have a negative effect on the state of the whole organism is not recommended.
The main signs that the cause of insomnia is advanced age include early awakenings and the same sudden falling asleep. In addition to all this, during the day a person has drowsiness, which makes him less efficient.
By the way, women who have crossed the 50-year age barrier also experience insomnia, the main reason for which is menopause. Statistics show that the problem worries every third woman who has entered this period. As a rule, the main cause of this problem is apathy, andalso a depressive state, which is too depressing for the fair sex during menopause. Why is insomnia most difficult to endure during menopause? This is due to the fact that, as a rule, she does not come alone, but is accompanied by a rapid heartbeat, increased sweating, which is especially pronounced at night, an increase in anxiety, as well as absent-mindedness and weakness. Experts recommend treating this type of insomnia in conjunction with taking steps to address other he alth problems.
Heredity
Surprisingly, in some cases, insomnia can be caused by a hereditary factor, because scientists have long established that a tendency to this problem can be transmitted from parents to children.
In this case, the main cause of the development of a hereditary problem is associated with the production of an insufficient level of the sleep hormone, as well as a low level of the sleep center located in the cerebellum.
In order to control this problem and its possible elimination, sleepologists strongly recommend keeping a separate diary, on the pages of which it is necessary to make notes about food, drinking throughout the day. In such a diary, it is also recommended to write down all stressful situations and indicate other factors that one way or another could affect the ability of the nervous system to relax at night. The analysis of the records made helps to establish the true causes of insomnia.
Which doctor to contact
Many Russians are tormented by the same question: which doctor should I contact if they suffer from insomnia?
In fact, the first steps in the fight against this problem can be taken by visiting a cardiologist, therapist, neurologist, psychiatrist, psychologist and somnologist - a specialist whose competence includes solving all problems related to sleep.
As for the therapist, he begins to determine the causes of the problem by measuring pressure and pulse. As practice shows, insomnia with pressure (hypertension) is a fairly common phenomenon that disappears when the underlying cause is eliminated.
Cardiologists can determine whether a sleep disorder is due to cardiovascular disease, and neurologists determine the state of the nervous system.
Moreover, it is noted that when observing insomnia, it is necessary to consult a psychologist, since its problem often lies in the subconscious of a person and consists of anxiety or anxiety. As a rule, it can be solved without the use of medicines. It is enough to observe general sleep hygiene.
If a person has a sleep disorder, then the most correct way out will be his appeal to a sleep center. This science is young and there are currently few specialists in the field, but if there is one in your area, it is worth making an appointment with him.
General recommendations for the treatment of insomnia
Medical experts give a lot of advice onhow to deal with insomnia. Among them, not only the stabilization of the sleep regimen and ensuring its hygiene, but also the maintenance of physical activity throughout the day.
In addition to all this, somnologists strongly recommend avoiding overeating at night, as well as the use in the afternoon of drugs that tonic the nervous system of the body: alcohol, tobacco, caffeine.
Experts say that before going to bed you can treat yourself to a relaxing massage session, listening to meditative music, reading your favorite book. Taking a relaxing bath also improves the quality of sleep.
Very good for sleep the sound of rain. Therefore, if it is raining outside, do not be too lazy to open the window. In this case, the room will not just be ventilated - the air in it will be saturated with ozone, and the nervous system will relax. By the way, the recording of rain noise for sleep included in the column is no less useful. This opinion was expressed not so long ago by experts. Therefore, if you experience some difficulties with falling asleep, by all means use this advice and put on a relaxing melody.
With insomnia, vitamins also help very well. They are best taken on the recommendation of the attending physician, having determined the most appropriate composition. With insomnia, vitamins D, groups B, E, A, C are needed. Magnesium, potassium and calcium improve the quality of sleep. Such complexes as Jarrow Formulas Sleep Optimizer, Alphabet Biorhythm, Neuromultivit, Relaxis, B-complex stress-formula.
