Tuesday 29 January 2013

Insomnia - causes and effects


insomnia-causes-effects

Author: Jacob Daniel
Insomnia is a disorder of sleep where one finds it uneasy to fall asleep for quite a long time. Insomnia is not only the inability to fall asleep but one also experiences a long sleeping disorder. Sleep is something that is more connected with the brain and thus any snag in brain causes sleep disorders more likely. Insomnia can arise at any age but it is more likely to affect the elderly or those who are caught up with busy lifestyles. People may suffer from insomnia for a short period say about 3 weeks or for a long time say for years. Insomnia has many adverse effects on human body and health like memory loss, irritability, depression that at the end leads to heart diseases like stroke.
There are mainly three categories into which this condition can be categorized they are primary, secondary and comorbid insomnia conditions. Primary insomnia is a condition where one has a sleep disorder, complains of protracted sleep or non-refreshing sleep. This condition is not linked to medical or psychiatric problems but if this disorder persists more than a month it is high time you take it serious and diagnose the reason behind this. There can a be a lot of things around you and by simplifying those you can certainly get a healthy sleep full life. Let us put an eye on the causes of insomnia in detail.
  • One of the common insomnia causes are chronic pain as people suffering from such pain tend to have less sleep or sleep disorders. Chronic pain such as continuing headache, back pain or some sort of joint syndrome are the main causes of sleeplessness and restless nights.
  • Insomnia in many cases is a symptom and a cause of people falling into depression largely. If you are having stress or are suffering from some emotional trauma, you are more likely to get depressed very easily as your emotional status is very weak and thus sleeplessness is the first thing to caught up the mind. Brain uses a single neurotransmitter for mood and sleep and thus both are connected and affected by each other.
  • If you are a chronic snorer then be alert, as studies state that snoring may be the symptom of an upcoming sleeplessness disorder. This is also a disorder, which is linked to sever issues like high blood pressure and heart diseases like heart stroke.
  • Jet lag may also be a reason for a short-term sleep disorder as crossing over the time zones often disturb brain functioning and causes you to have disturbed sleep. It takes up to three days to get over jet lag if you are affected once by it but if you travel over time zones often then it may become a chronic sleep issue and must be cured to not to have its effect on health.
  • If you are working in shifts that often keeps changing between nights and days, you will certainly suffer from insomnia as this directly affects brain. People who work in shifts have less serotonin hormone level, which is responsible for sleep and thus if you are having such issues better take care of your shift timings to avoid any long-term issues.
  • Hormonal changes like menstruation, pregnancy or menopause may also affect once sleeping syndrome as tender breasts, hot flashes, recurrent urination affects sleep patterns and causes insomnia and thus consulting your doctor and taking proper medication to avoid the side effects is must.
  • Prolonged diseases like asthma, heart failure, Parkinson's or any other neurological disease are also likely to affect sleep as there is a disturbance in the breathing patter that directly affects sleep and thus consulting your physician and taking proper medication and advice is must.
Some of the other unhealthy lifestyle habits like smoking, alcohol or taking drugs also affects sleep largely as all your internal hormones get affected. Taking a lot of medicines may also effect sleep specially if your bedtime dosage is high thus consulting a physician beforetime with all these issues is very important. If you adopt a little precaution and take relevant measures like leaving smoking, drinking and doing proper meditation, you can certainly cure the prolonged sleeplessness.

About the Author
If you want to know more about causes of insomnia, kindly visit www.healthierpost.com.

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