Insomnia is the feeling of lack of sleep amount or depth.
Good sleep is really perceived as a benefit. If you sleep well and long enough, you will feel good physically, mental reactions are normal, and the mood more good. But if You suffer from insomnia, then life loses all its charms.
Insomnia sleep can be a total of more than 5 hours a night, and often even 8 hours. That is, from an objective point of view this would be a dream. But you feel that you slept enough. The secret of this discrepancy lies in the violation of sleep structure for insomnia. Because scientists do not use the term “insomnia”, they are talking about “insomnia” – sleep disorders.
Human sleep consists of alternating two phases and 4 phases. All state changes of the brain were fixed with the help of EEG.
– The phase of slow sleep
-1 stage. When falling asleep, reduced heart rate, breathing, muscle tone. Recorded on EEG beta and theta waves.
– 2 stage. Appear “sleep spindles” and K-complexes – a kind of wave of brain electrical activity characteristic of deep sleep. At this time, all the muscles are relaxed, and may even come to a short stop breathing, for 10 seconds or less.
– 3 and 4 stages. Stage Delta sleep. In this stage the EEG is dominated by Delta waves. Breath slow, deep and rhythmic, blood pressure is reduced.
– REM sleep. The EEG at this time is recorded theta rhythm. A striking feature of this phase is the rapid eye movement, which is visible through the eyelids of the observer. Heart rate and respiration spasmodic, blood pressure changes, observed an erection in my sleep. At this point, we have dreams.
For insomnia normal sleep patterns disrupted. Some stages may be absent, or be distorted. There has been a violation of the sequence of brain rhythms. This provokes frequent waking tired after sleep, sleeping longer than 15 minutes.
Causes of insomnia
Changes in the structure of sleep usually occurs with age. In people over 60 years of complaints of insomnia occur 4 times more often than in young and middle-aged.
But as the cause of insomnia can be mental and neurological disorders, and often changes in physical health.
Insomnia in pregnant women during 2-3 trimester is associated with increasing activity of the fetus.
Insomnia during menopause is due to hormonal changes and restructuring of metabolic processes.
Hyperthyroidism can cause insomnia as a result of increased stimulation activity of the heart and nervous system.
Academician A. M. Weiner, who devoted his scientific career to the study of sleep, identified the following causes of insomnia:
– stress (psychophysiological insomnia),
– neuroses,
– mental illness
– somatic diseases,
– psychotropic drugs
– the effects of alcohol,
– toxic factors,
– endocrine-metabolic diseases,
– organic brain disease,
– syndromes that occur during sleep (sleep apnea syndrome in sleep, movement disorders during sleep),
pain phenomena
– adverse external conditions (noise, humidity,etc.)
– shift work
– the change of time zones
– disturbed sleep hygiene.
How to get rid of insomnia
Insomnia treatment first starts with finding out the overall health. If you know the causes to cure insomnia without eliminating them will not work.
To start treatment with taking sleeping pills is not rational, and it may even make the problem worse. Narcotic drugs are prescribed in extreme cases, and the choice should always be in favor of more modern medicines. Sleeping pill will be effective and will not harm if you can induce sleep, as close as possible to the structure of normal sleep.
