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Causes of Insomnia

     

If you are one of those who wakes up quite often during night, or you are waking up too early in the morning then you may be suffering from insomnia.

Insomnia or sleeping disorder can run havoc with your day schedules. Sleepiness, fatigue, lack of concentration and irritation are the effects of sleeplessness.

Insomnia can have serious repercussions, including, making us feel crappy or lifeless or moody or lowering our thinking speed and productivity or weakening the immune system, or making us more susceptible to viruses or cause vehicular accidents or absenteeism.

Acute insomnia can last from one night to a few weeks. Often caused by emotional or physical discomfort, it can be related to a single specific event.

Various causes of Insomnia

Causes of acute insomnia can be:

  • job loss or change,
  • death of a loved one,
  • shifting, illness,
  • environmental factors like noise, light or extreme temperatures, jet lag and alternating day and night shift.

Insomnia become chronic when the sleepless condition lasts for more than 3 nights a week or a month or longer. The reasons for chronic insomnia can be many things. The most common cause of chronic insomnia are:

  • depression
  • chronic stress
  • pain or discomfort

How to find causes of insomnia?

Evaluation of patient with insomnia includes a physical examination, medical and sleep history and record of sleep patterns.

Some other causes of Insomnia:

Caffeine is the most widely known cause of insomnia. Alcohol is tricky. Alcohol actually lightens and fragments sleep, causing wake up as the body metabolizes it.

Heavy meals actually keeps one awake as the digestive system puts in some overtime. Avoid spicy and fatty foods that cause heart burns. Milk has an amino acid that the body converts to a sleep enhancing compound in the brain. Calcium is a natural relaxing agent along with several other vitamins such as B vitamin and magnesium.

If hunger bothers at night have a light snack before bedtime. Some foods like snacks are cottage cheese, soy nuts, chicken and pumpkin seeds in particular promote production of melatonin, a hormone associated with the onset of sleep.

Finally, high carbohydrate foods such as bread act upon another essential hormone, seratonin, which reduces anxiety and contributes to refreshing sleep.

Nicotine is a stimulant that increases blood pressure, speeds up the heart rate and stimulates brain activity and therefore smoking is very injurious indeed!

Regular exercise is a sleep promoter. But if worked out too close to bedtime, the increase in heart rate and metabolism will make the body too excitable to sleep. Exercise in the late afternoon, because there will be time in the evening to settle down. Such activities help raise body temperature and the body reacts by producing melatonin to take the body temperature back down.

Lets read some interesting facts about causes of insomnia and its effect on a person by some stories.

Aromatherapy for Insomnia Know about various essential oils used in treating Insomnia.

What is Insomnia and how insomnia causes other illness?

What are various types of insomnia?
They vary in terms of the way and the conditions they occur due to. Some of the common Sleeping disorder types vary from Behavioral sleeping disorder to circadian rhythm disorders.

Insomnia Causes and Dreams:
We Sleep and we dream. So why do we dream? Read about various dreaming phases and their effects on the sleeping cycle of an individual.

Insomnia: How too much sleep can effect your well being?
Too much of anything can cause it behave abnormally. Sleep is not an exception to this. Find the appropriate sleep time and duration.

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