Insomnia:
“Do you sleep well at night? A question asked by Dr. Phil McGraw asks Madea, in her anger management counseling session (Madea Goes to Jail. Directed by Emmett “Tyler” Perry
Jr, Lionsgate, 20 Feb. 2009). Insomnia is prolonged and usually abnormal inability to get enough sleep (Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 6 Dec. 2017). Sleep is needed to live a happy, healthy life, and medical professionals recommend that you sleep eight hours per day.
Some people become very grouchy when they don’t get enough sleep. If you do not sleep at night it can become difficult to perform certain tasks, a lack of sleep causes your body to become weaker. My grandma used to have problems with insomnia. One time I went and stayed the week with my grandparents, my cousin and I went fishing really late and grandma was sitting up waiting on us. We walked in and she was sitting in the living room with all the lights off, the TV was on and she was working on a jigsaw puzzle. I asked her, “Grandma what are you doing up?”
Well of course her response was, “I had to have you boys here before I could go to sleep.” I simply leaned back in the recliner to go to sleep and she’s still sitting there. By now it’s like 2:30
AM, and she was just sitting there like it’s nothing. She decided to go lay down at about 4:30
AM, and woke me up going to bed. She didn’t really go to sleep, she just layed down.
Greenlee 2
“Insomnia can be caused by psychiatric and medical conditions, unhealthy sleep habits, specific substances, and/or certain biological factors.” Some examples of medical conditions are;
Nasal/sinus allergies, Gastrointestinal problems such as reflux, Arthritis, Asthma, Neurological conditions such as Parkinson’s Disease, Chronic Pain, Low Back Pain. Medications taken for the common cold and nasal allergies, high blood pressure, heart disease, thyroid disease, birth control, asthma, and depression can also cause insomnia. In addition, insomnia may be a symptom of underlying sleep disorders, like restless legs disorder, and sleep apnea. Restless legs disorder is the a neurological condition in which a person has an uncomfortable sensation of needing to move his or her legs. With sleep apnea, a person's airway becomes
Insomnia is the most common sleep disorder. It can have a devastating impact on one’s emotion, physical, occupation and social life. While it occasionally can be seen in the clinical setting as a primary diagnosis, it most often presents as a comorbidity to a medical or psychiatric issue;
It can be considered a symptom of an undiagnosed sleep disorder or other medical conditions. Those affected by sleep deprivation are known to experience daytime sleepiness, fatigue, clumsiness, and weight gain/loss as well as effects on the brain and cognitive functions. These symptoms negatively affect students who are having to get up early for school (“Sleep Deprivation - Research & Treatments”).
Fatigue disorder. It can also change sleep patterns and cause the following: digestive disorders, chronic
I can 't sleep; I lay their awake for hours at time, my workday just drag on without being able to accomplish my work in a timely manor. My boss doesn 't know and the lack of sleep is going to get me a poor review. I want to go out tonight but I’m just too tired, I need to sleep. This is the effect of insomnia, statements like these cause people to search out a solution to the problem. Some will turn prescription drugs others will turn to therapy to find the answer that will work for them. Insomnia is a condition that can cause serious problem in all areas of life not
Sleepiness can characterized by excessive daytime sleep and it can cause to cataplexy (abrupt loss of muscle tone) hallucinations and sleep paralysis.
Traditional treatments for chronic insomnia include drugs such as over-the-counter antihistamine preparations, with or without mild analgesics, benzodiazepine receptor agonists, sedating antidepressants, neuroleptics, melatonin, and herbal remedies such as valerian. The pharmacological advance has remained the most extensively used for decades, in spite of extensive concerns about long-term effectiveness, habituation, tolerance, and potential difficulties, especially in elderly people. Growing evidence suggests that non-pharmacological treatments, alone or perhaps in combination with drugs, produce clinically noteworthy and strong improvement. In looking at summary data about treatments, it should be noted, with some recent exceptions, outcome studies of pharmacotherapy are almost entirely restricted to brief treatment duration of less than 6 weeks. Even though little doubt exists about the helpfulness of hypnotic drugs for short-term treatment of acute insomnia, evidence shows that the effects of short-term pharmacotherapy trials degrade over time in patients with chronic insomnia. By contrast, cognitive-behavioural treatments are tough and robustly effective on long-term follow-up. In routine practice, pharmacotherapy and a variety of non-pharmacological interventions are sometimes united. Although clinical experience would seem to propose that this joint approach
I think I just heard the floorboards creek. She must be awake now. Abigail slowly walks into the living room. She yawns and asks, "How long have you been up?" "Not very long" I reply. She sits down next to me. She's blushing and trying to avoid eye contact. It makes sense,
For those who are seeking treatment without the help of sleeping pills, a form of cognitive behavioral therapy may be the right method for them. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia, often called CBT-I, is an approved method for treating insomnia without the use of sleeping pills (Cognitive). Focusing on the cognitive aspect of insomnia as a treatment solution is much like trying to find the underlying cause of what is keeping the individual awake at night. This type of therapy involves regular meetings and follow ups with a doctor who will closely evaluate the person’s changing sleep habits while making changes as needed to fit that person’s needs until they get to the point where they can sleep regularly. Some changes that are recommended by the staff of Mayo Clinic may include stimulus control therapy or improving the sleep environment. Stimulus control therapy is the act of training your mind to associate your bedroom with sleeping rather than lying awake or working. It may be helpful to not lie in bed on the phone or watch T.V at night because those could be distractions to the mind that are keeping the body awake. Improving the sleeping environment can aid the body to get in “sleep mode”. Sleeping could be improved by doing simple tasks such as adjusting the room temperature, making the room darker, or eliminating noise can also put the mind at ease for a restful night of sleep (Mayo Clinic Staff). CBT is not a quick cure by any means; however, it can be very successful and long lasting if a person is able to stick with it. A sleep diary is important in CBT as well so that the doctor can assess the person’s changes and they can see the changes as
health.lacking sleep is a cause of depression, obesity ,and makes it hard to function in
Sleepiness during the day and napping a lot are some of the common features of
Sleep is undoubtedly one of the most essential requirements for the human body to function properly. It plays a very important role in ensuring the wellness of the human body both physically as well as mentally. In fact, the importance of sleep is clear from the fact that it helps you in maintaining a good lifestyle throughout our entire lifetime. Not only does it help maintain our physical and mental health; rather it also helps in maintaining a decent and healthy lifestyle along with ensuring safety from a number of fatal diseases. It is usually said that the mood in which you wake up is largely dependent on the type of sleep you have been in. This in itself is a big proof of the importance of sleep in our lives. While sleeping, our body finally gets its share of rest and it also gets ample time in rejuvenating from all the wear and tear that it went through during the entire day. Not only this, the body is in its own working condition when we are sleeping as this is the time when it supports the healthy functioning of the brain as well as physical attributes of our body.
“Insomnia is the inability to obtain adequate amount or quality of sleep. The difficulty can be with falling asleep, remaining asleep, or both” (“Insomnia Encyclopedia“). Sleeping is a major point in physically and mentally restoring yourself for the tasks ahead. Most people say that about eight hours of sleep is an adequate amount, however it differs from person to person depending on their sex, age, and health conditions. An estimated one-third of the population suffers from some form of insomnia. “In recent studies, a survey reported that 30% of American women and 20% of American men took medication to help them sleep during the course of a year” (“Insomnia”). The medications these people took are called
I woke up in my room. I went downstairs and my Evelyn was in the dining room, “Are mom and dad awake? “ I said
The day started off by me screaming at the top of my lungs to wake her up, because she can never seem to get up on her own. After several minutes I felt myself get yanked off of the cord, gosh, does she have any sense of respect? The morning progressed as normal, I got jabbed at, sat on the counter, got jabbed at, got some yogurt spilt on me, almost suffocated because my face was smothered on the bed, and then got jabbed at some more.
It is 2:00 in the morning. She should really be asleep by now, but she isn’t.