The Cause of Insomnia:
Actually, there is no single reason why some people suffer from insomnia and other people do not. But most of the experts concur that it is often brought about from anxiety and stress.
Short-term insomnia, the most common insomnia type, may be brought on by a number of different factors. Sometimes taking particular medications can interrupt normal sleep patterns. If you suspect that your medication is causing you to have insomnia, then you need to have this checked out by your physician or by a pharmacist.
Coffee: Caffeine will often cause sleep problems, and most of us have experienced caffeine induced insomnia at one time or another. Nicotine can also cause sleeplessness, therefore giving up cigarette smoking can relieve short-term insomnia.
Daylight has an effect on our sleeping patterns. Too much or too little natural light can disrupt and alter our sleep patterns.
Another common cause of insomnia can be lifestyle changes or stress. Sometimes a major or traumatic event can spark insomnia. Some examples of this are injury, surgery, job loss, death of a loved one, relationship break-ups etc.
Some people have developed temporary insomnia after a relatively minor event in their lives, such as extremes in the weather, pressure from school exams, problems at work and even just from having to travel. In most cases like these, the insomnia resolves itself when normally returns to the persons life.
Insomnia treatment is usually only resorted to when the sleeplessness continues longer than for just a few weeks. Or if it is interfering with the person’s normal daily functioning. A full physical and medical check-up will be in order, to find out if there is some particular illness causing the sleep disorder.
We should also be sure to address hormones, as they seem to play a major role in insomnia in women. Although such insomnia is most often temporary, it can certainly play havoc in someone’s life. During menstruation, the level of a the hormone. Progesterone takes a dive, which causes insomnia. It’s been shown that during pregnancy, this same hormone changes within the body greatly in the first three months and the last three months and that insomnia often is a result of this. The same is true for menopause in women. But when you find a woman with chronic insomnia after the age of 50, it is likely to be due to other causes.
Chronic Insomnia is complete other story. It seems to be rooted much more deeply, and the causes may be a mixture of different reasons. A large percentage of chronic insomnia cases prove to have some sort of psychological basis. Most often, the cause of insomnia is anxiety and depression.
But it should be noted that insomnia may itself cause emotional problems, so it is often unclear which condition triggered the other, or if they both have a common source. Evidence exists in a national survey by the US Department of Health and Human Services. They found that 47 percent of those reporting severe insomnia also reported feeling a high level of emotional distress.
Pain and discomfort from an injury, illness, or disability can also impair sleep. When people are in pain or sick, they general have medication to help them through the uncomfortable symptoms. Unfortunately, many of these medicines can also cause insomnia to come about or even to get worse.
Other causes have been shown to contribute to insomnia such as substance abuse, working on a shift such as all night shifts at work, high levels of stress hormones and imbalance in hormones. The normal aging process has been known to cause insomnia, possibly due to hormonal changes. There may also be a genetic link.
