Contents
Sleep is an important part of the daily cycle of every person. Sleep should not be viewed as just relaxation. This is the process of restoring energy in the nervous system and throughout the body, with a deficiency of which failures and pathologies occur.
Sleep should not only be sufficient in duration, but also full in quality. Insomnia threatens not only with a decrease in efficiency and drowsiness, but also with severe somatic and mental illnesses.
Somnologists have conducted a large number of different studies of sleep disorders and their impact on the state of the human body. For example, it has been experimentally proven that insomnia leads to a delay in the regeneration of damaged tissues and a decrease in the resistance of the immune system to infections. The lack of melatonin, which is produced in the body when a person sleeps at night, threatens with rapid aging and the appearance of cancer.
Regular lack of sleep increases a person’s susceptibility to painful stimuli. Frequent insomnia causes menstrual irregularities in women. Long-term lack of sleep leads to irreversible changes in the brain, which is fraught with mental disorders.
In the modern world, there are a whole host of reasons why a person cannot get enough sleep. By identifying and eliminating the main cause of insomnia, you can help a person maintain health, restore performance and improve personal life.
Stress and nervous excitement
Stress can be caused by both negative (trouble at work, lack of money, unsettled life) and positive (love experiences, preparation for the holiday) emotions. Nervous exhaustion caused by frequent stressful conditions can provoke overexcitation of the nervous system. According to statistics, stress causes insomnia more often in women than in men.
The accumulation of a large number of cases that a person does not have time to solve during the working day provokes insomnia. To normalize their sleep, people should pay attention to carefully planning their working hours and strict implementation of the plan. The motto of people with a large “baggage” of unfinished business is to do everything on time, without putting it off indefinitely.
Communication with a large number of people in a day can also cause sleep disturbance. The mood with which these meetings took place plays an important role here. Vivid positive or negative impressions of the meeting make a person, lying in bed, relive the current situation again and again, imagining what events could have been if any circumstances had changed.
Guilt is another of the strongest incentives for not sleeping. Until a person gets rid of this annoying feeling, auxiliary methods will hardly help him.
Watch exciting movies and shows
Often, after heartbreaking films or programs, viewers cannot fall asleep for a long time. The habit of watching such TV projects leads to a shift in the time of falling asleep. As a result, a person gets up in the morning broken and unrested.
The best option for receptive people is to avoid watching exciting movies and shows before bed. At present, it is not difficult to watch them recorded on the Internet at another convenient time, but not at night.
Alcohol intake
Alcohol causes a variety of reactions in people: from excitement to stupor. In some cases, alcohol can relax and help you sleep. But in these cases we are talking only about a small dose of ethanol (no more than 30 ml). At the same time, you should not abuse such a “sleeping pill”: if you take it every evening, the dose will gradually increase. And this is the path to alcoholism, no matter how well-intentioned the adoption of alcohol is not justified.
Since the body needs more time to recover from drinking alcohol than it does to sleep normally, it’s worth going to bed an hour or two earlier than usual.
The use of stimulants
Some of the drugs have an exciting effect on the nervous system, even if they do not belong to the group of stimulants of the central nervous system. The doctor who prescribed them should warn the patient about their exciting effect. This information is contained in the annotation to the medication.
A responsible patient, before taking any medication, even prescribed by a doctor, must carefully study the instructions in order to avoid possible side effects and consequences. If the instructions for use contain a warning about possible insomnia while taking the drug, it is better not to take it immediately before bedtime.
Drugs also cause overexcitation in the brain, as a result of which a person cannot fall asleep for a long time. The best option to avoid insomnia in this case would be to give up the life-threatening addiction.
Coffeemania and strong tea
Coffee and tea are sources of caffeine, which has a stimulating effect on the cardiovascular and nervous systems. Excessive passion for these drinks in some cases can cause addiction to them, when the body each time needs an increasing amount of the drink, and in others it can lead to overexcitation and prohibitive inhibition.
Transmarginal inhibition in medicine is the response of the nervous system to excessive exposure (above the threshold value). Large doses of caffeine instead of excitation lead to inhibition of brain activity, but do not cause sleep. The brain is in a state of wakefulness, but at the same time it reacts little to what is happening around. A similar state is experienced by the circulatory system. Thus, an overdose of caffeine can cause insomnia, but it will not increase performance.
To avoid this condition, you should drink the last cup of coffee or strong tea at least 2 hours before bedtime, and for people who are especially sensitive to caffeine – in the afternoon.
Prolonged circadian rhythm disturbances
A non-standard work schedule often provokes sleep disturbances. Frequent night shifts can lead to chronic sleep deprivation due to reduced sleep time. At the same time, going to bed after a night shift, a person tosses and turns for a long time, cannot fully fall asleep, and after falling asleep, he often sleeps restlessly, shallowly. This problem needs to be solved radically – by changing the work schedule.
Prolonged disruptions in the circadian rhythm can lead to hormonal disorders and mental disorders, which will inevitably progress with age.
Upcoming Events
Often insomnia torments people before upcoming events:
- wedding
- operation;
- business trip;
- important meeting;
- long trip.
If a person is facing some event, but not tomorrow, but in a week or two, then you should not think about it every night. Everyone should learn to be distracted and deal with problems as they come. This not only normalizes sleep, but also reduces the overall level of anxiety and irritability.
scary dreams
People who tend to have nightmares in their dreams are afraid to fall asleep. Therefore, they can exhaust themselves by watching TV, working at a computer, reading, and other “concerns” that they deliberately invent for themselves. However, this behavior is not a solution to the problem, it only exacerbates it.
People who regularly see terrible dreams need a confidential conversation with their relatives, a meeting with a psychologist, and in some cases with a psychiatrist. Psychological techniques and the use of drug and non-drug methods will help get rid of bad dreams and, accordingly, eliminate insomnia.
Uncomfortable sleeping conditions
Uncomfortable conditions for sleeping can cause insomnia. It can be:
- switched on light or TV;
- uncomfortable mattress or pillow;
- loud music, barking, noise or snoring;
- annoying insects;
- hot or cold room;
- lack of oxygen.
The best way to deal with insomnia in these cases is to change the sleeping conditions. So, for example, you can turn off the TV or cover the lantern shining through the window with thick curtains. But for various reasons, this is not always possible.
In such cases, it is necessary for those who cannot fall asleep to create comfortable conditions for their sleep. For example, with the problem of the included light, special glasses for sleep are easily dealt with, with the problem of noise behind the wall or the snoring of a spouse – earplugs. They get rid of uncomfortable temperature conditions by changing the blanket and night clothes: if it’s hot, put on a T-shirt instead of pajamas and cover yourself with a thin sheet; if it’s cold, put on warm pajamas instead of a T-shirt and cover yourself with an additional warm blanket.
The brain suffers from oxygen starvation, so airing the room before going to bed is the right habit. Firstly, fresh air fills the room with oxygen, secondly, air exchange is needed to remove musty and other odors from the room, and thirdly, the incoming night air cools the room to sleep.
Mental illness
Insomnia often accompanies mental disorders in people. Anxiety and depressive states of varying degrees are constant companions of mental illness. Pathological foci are formed in the brain of mentally ill people, which lead to overexcitation or deep inhibition of a person. The nervous system experiences an artificial energy deficit, and the circulation of pathological impulses in the brain causes the body to stay awake.
In the initial stages of mental disorders, patients often experience persistent sleep disturbances: from difficulty falling asleep to complete insomnia. If specialized treatment of such patients is not taken up in time, their illness and insomnia will progress, leading to irreversible changes and consequences.
Somatic pathologies
Diseases of various organs and systems are often accompanied by pain. Pain causes discomfort and, as a result, leads to sleep disorders in a sick person. Tossing and turning in bed, searching for a comfortable or forced position, going for medicine or going to the toilet ends in lack of sleep. The regular repetition of such a situation aggravates the patient’s condition, causing psychosomatic depressive states, which are extremely difficult to get rid of.
Pain cannot be tolerated: it must be eliminated. The earlier the cause of the evening (night) discomfort is established and the appropriate treatment is carried out, the less consequences will be for the patient’s psyche.
How to make falling asleep easier?
Naturally, the best solution to the problem of frequent insomnia is to eliminate their cause. If insomnia for a person is a rare occurrence, then you can try to get rid of it with simple folk methods.
On the eve of sleep, you can not eat. Firstly, food is not digested well during sleep, and secondly, a full stomach will cause a feeling of discomfort in a sleeping person, causing him to toss and turn.
A good night’s sleep is promoted by a short walk in the fresh air. For many people, evening exercises or meditation helps to relax.
In the bedroom, shortly before lights out, you can light an aroma candle or aroma lamp with sedative oils (orange, rosemary, lavender, sandalwood, basil). While the room is enveloped in hypnotic aromas, you can take a relaxing warm bath with sea salt or chamomile decoction, and then drink a cup of tea with mint or lemon balm. Immediately before going to bed, you should visit the toilet. Often nightly awakenings to go to the toilet end in early morning insomnia.
Each person knows their body better than others, so preparation for sleep will be different for different people. However, the most important thing for successful falling asleep and sound healthy sleep is peace of mind and warm relationships with loved ones, so this should always be strived for.