How can you not fight insomnia even in extreme situations? Sleeping pills, daytime naps and coffee to combat drowsiness only worsen the situation, the specialist explained.
Rhonda Weinger, head of the undergraduate nursing program at Aspen University (USA), warned about this in her in The Nurse Practitioner magazine. Weinger drew her conclusions based on the results of a study involving 137 patients at a clinic for the treatment of sleep problems.
All of these people talked about the strategies they usually use to deal with insomnia. The scientists then studied exactly how these methods affect sleep using polysomnography, which provides detailed information about the quality of sleep. As a result, it turned out that most patients most often resort to the following ways to overcome insomnia:
1. Caffeine
Two-thirds of the study participants reported trying to combat daytime sleepiness with large cups of coffee. However, as polysomnography results have shown, excess caffeine during the day only exacerbates problems with sleep at night, leading to too long periods of «REM sleep» when a person dreams and there is increased activity in the brain.
2. Sleeping pills
Nearly half of the participants in the study were taking prescription sleeping pills, and another 19% were taking over-the-counter insomnia medications (40% of those were various herbal supplements). A polysomnographic study has shown that, in addition to possible side effects and the risk of addiction, taking sleeping pills slows down the onset of REM sleep, and also reduces the number of REM sleep periods per night. At the same time, such drugs have their own advantages — they help you fall asleep faster and wake up less often during the night.
3. Daytime sleep
More than a quarter of the participants, having not slept at night, tried to sleep during the day. However, although daytime naps helped them cope with their sleepiness, it kept the participants awake at night for a very long time.
Weinger calls all these strategies for dealing with insomnia «inadequate» and believes that simple methods such as hygiene and sleep patterns work best in this sense — you need to go to bed at the same time every day, while the bedroom should be total darkness and coldness.
“Always try to get eight hours of sleep. Do not sleep during the day, but stick to the same routine every day, and sleep will gradually improve, ”she emphasizes.
Rhonda Winegar «Maladaptive coping mechanisms of sleep». The Nurse Practitioner, Volume 47, Issue 3, March 2022.