Insomnia symptoms information and
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Sleep aid tips about insomnia symptoms for information and remedies for your better sleep which may also cure any mild insomnia symptoms you may want natural sleep aid remedies for.
There is no medical test that can tell us conclusively whether a person has insomnia. Sometimes, sleep tests can be normal in the face of severe sleep complaints. Simply stated, insomnia is the inability to fall asleep or stay asleep, the tendency to awaken early in the morning, or the sense of light and un-refreshing sleep. Insomnia is simply an impression that the sufferer has regarding the quantity or quality of his sleep. Insomnia is a common malady. Half of the adult population has it over the course of a year; 35% experience insomnia on an occasional basis;12% on an ongoing basis. It is not surprising that sleep difficulties are also among the most frequently encountered problems in clinical medicine. Insomnia affects all ages, yet increases in prevalence with age. Women are twice as likely to have it compared to men. It is seen in all cultures and races.
Physicians often overlook the misery and debilitation associated with insomnia. Additionally, only 5% of all insomniacs approach their physicians specifically for insomnia as a primary complaint. Recent studies have shown, however, that insomnia can have profound negative effects on health and well being. Insomniacs report difficulties with memory and task completion, are often irritable, and have greater difficulty staying awake during daytime tasks than non-insomniacs. Inadequate sleep is associated with decreased work efficiency. Although the long-term risks of insomnia have not been adequately assessed, there is an emerging sense that unrelenting insomnia can bring on depression and other emotional difficulties. Insomnia has long been assumed to be simply the result of tension or stress. However, key developments over the past four decades have helped tease apart and identify the many physical and emotional disorders that can be responsible for insomnia. The first of these was the discovery that sleep is not a uniform state, but a combination of five separate sleep stages. The second was the technical discovery of "polysomnography," the physiological study of sleep in a laboratory setting, which led to the establishment of the field of sleep disorders medicine. It is now clear that insomnia is not one entity, but can be a symptom of many different types of disorders, each with its own set of treatments. The first step in proper treatment, therefore, is accurate diagnosis.
Some Causes of Insomia and Treatments for insomnia symptoms Adjustment Sleep Disorder Sudden emotional stress, such as a job loss or a hospitalization, can induce transient insomnia. Sudden changes in work shift and travel across time zones can also cause difficulties with sleep. However, these difficulties usually resolve within a brief period of time, typically a few weeks. Many insomniacs, however, unknowingly intensify the effect of, or unnecessarily prolong, these insomnias by engaging in behaviors that make matters worse. Therefore, proper adherence to sleep hygiene rules can be helpful in producing a more rapid resolution to this type of insomnia. Examples of sleep hygiene measures include:
Maintain a regular bedtime schedule.
Learn strategies to make bedtime as relaxing and tension-free as possible. In general, no formal medical treatment is necessary for such short-lasting insomnia. In certain cases, however, such as when daytime fatigue begins to interfere with daily activities, seeking medical attention is warranted. Medical treatment is also warranted if the insomnia lasts for more than just a few weeks. Although in many insomnia cases, self-help strategies such as those mentioned above are sufficient in overcoming insomnia rapidly, insomnia can escalate and become chronic. In this case, the causes of insomnia may represent more significant medical or emotional disorders. Therefore, sufferers should seek help if their own strategies do not relieve insomnia within a few weeks. The disorders below are examples of some of the more common chronic insomnia conditions that warrant further medical attention.
Psychophysiologic Insomnia Psychophysiologic insomnia can follow a few nights of sleeplessness due to an adjustment sleep disorder. Concern regarding the prospect of facing yet another night of sleeplessness can result in an escalation of tension and anxiety with each successive night. The insomniac begins to dread going to bed and often feels tension increasing as bedtime approaches. He may become preoccupied with insomnia. Sufferers often spend hours in bed awake focused upon and brooding over their sleeplessness.
In severe cases, the focus of their thoughts, and even conversations with others, may begin to revolve around insomnia. Curiously, sufferers often have little difficulty falling asleep during the course of the day when their minds are focused on other issues, such as during meetings. They also may experience relief from their own bedrooms as they fall asleep easily when away from home, such as on vacation on in a hotel room.
Psychophysiologic insomnia is often managed with a combination of behavioral measures and medications. The most commonly utilized behavioral measures are relaxation training with EMG biofeedback training, psychotherapy (cognitive and insight-oriented), and stimulus control therapy (asking patients to use the bed only for sleep and to not stay in bed trying to sleep for more than ten minutes at a time, but to go into another room and to return to bed only after feeling sleepy). Sleep hygiene measures should be closely adhered to during and after the termination of treatment, regardless of type.
If you have suffered sleepless nights then you're familiar with a particular kind of torture. Minutes become hours, hours become eons, and problems you manage with ease during the day become nightmarish, circular conundrums when considered at 3 am. It's called insomnia, and not only does it cause frustration at night, it can also significantly impair you in the day. Consequences can include depression, extreme fatigue, poor concentration, lousy driving and even illness. As many as 25% of Americans suffer from an occasional bad night of sleep and approximately10% have a chronic problem with insomnia. Each year 70 million Americans spend approximately $148 million on a variety of remedies to either put them to sleep at night or keep them awake in the day.
Describing insomnia symptoms Insomnia is difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep and is often characterized by impairments in daytime functioning. People with insomnia often complain of impairments in attention, memory or concentration, impairments in their mood, feeling depressed or irritable or anxious, and impairments in their ability to function in the workplace, at home or even at school.
Adequate sleep is characterized by two things. One is enough sleep time-that's getting into bed, falling asleep quickly and staying asleep throughout the sleep period. The other thing is good quality sleep. That's a little more difficult to measure, but people know they've had good quality sleep when they wake up feeling rested and refreshed and ready to start the day. Sleep problems are quite common. Perhaps more than h alf of all Americans experience a sleep problem at some time in their lives. Somewhere between 9 and 17% of the adult population will experience chronic or more ongoing difficulties with their sleep. Insomnia affects older people more than it does younger people. It's more often reported in women, and it may be associated with certain medical or psychiatric conditions. Acute insomnia is insomnia that lasts one night or a few nights. Most people say that stress is the cause of an acute or temporary or transient insomnia. So people can trace the problem back to some event in their lives. Maybe having an argument with someone's spouse, or with an employer, is a good kind of stress, like receiving a marriage proposal or winning the lottery. All of these things can stimulate arousal and prevent sleep from occurring naturally. Chronic insomnia goes on for several days, weeks or even months, and for most people this means a long-term problem. It does not necessarily mean that a person is suffering from nightly insomnia. Most people who suffer from insomnia for the long term experience it on several nights a month, but not every night. According to the National Sleep Foundation, people with chronic insomnia have, on average, 16 nights of insomnia out of every 30. Treatments include behavioral as well as pharmacologic treatments. The behavioral treatments for insomnia include things like sleep hygiene, stimulus control therapy, sleep restriction therapy, relaxation therapies and other therapy, such as light therapy, that might be helpful to sleepers. Sleep hygiene is the development of good sleep habits. This refers to doing things like going to bed at the same time every night, getting up at the same time every morning, no matter what happened the night before. For most people, avoiding daytime naps, avoiding stimulants such as caffeine and nicotine, avoiding alcohol just prior to bedtime are all part of good sleep hygiene. Although alcohol is a sedative, it can really disrupt sleep. It's also important not to go to bed too hungry or too full, as both of those conditions can disturb sleep. And also making sure that one's environment is conducive to sleep-sleeping in a room that is dark, quiet, temperature controlled, humidity-controlled, and in a bed and surroundings that one finds comfortable. In sleep restriction therapy, a sleep clinician determines how much time the sleeper is spending in bed and how much time the sleeper is actually spending asleep, and attempts to reduce the amount of time in bed to about the same amount of time that sleeper reports sleeping. So if someone is spending eight hours in bed but sleeping only six, the clinician will reduce the amount of time in bed to only six.
Once there are adjustments made over the course of several weeks, often the patient comes back into the office and says, "I'm now in bed for five hours, and I'm sleeping for most of those five hours." Once that point is achieved, the clinician and patient can work together to begin extending the sleep time, hoping that it remains consolidated. And it often does.
Stimulus control therapy Stimulus control therapy was developed based on the idea that people with insomnia develop conditioned, or learned, reactions to their situation and begins to associate the bed and the bedroom with wakefulness rather than sleep.
So immediately upon getting into bed, instead of being prepared for wonderful, relaxing, delicious sleep, the person with insomnia becomes hyperaroused, agitated and experiences yet another night of insomnia, which of course reinforces the problem. So stimulus control tries to break those associations by making sure that the sleeper gets out of bed whenever he or she is awake. The primary recommendation for stimulus control therapy is to stay out of bed whenever you're awake.
Behavioral therapies People who use these therapies often report that they work very well. But one of the problems with behavioral therapies or for insomnia is they often take time to work, and patients don't want to wait. They're suffering. Their lives are impaired, and they want some immediate relief.
Advice for people first experiencing insomnia If someone's experiencing sleep problems and they find these problems distressing, or if they're associated with any impairment in daytime functioning, that's the time to talk to a doctor. We know that insomnia is associated with a number of significant problems in daytime functioning, in health and so on, so there's no need really to go on with the problem unattended. Talk to a doctor whenever insomnia results in distress or impairment.
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