Insomnia is the difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep. A person having insomnia often finds it hard to get a sound sleep during the night and wakes up frequently during the night. When people are having trouble sleeping, they often feel tired and weak all day and sometimes cannot perform their usual daily activities properly. This leads to health problems such as: lack of concentration, memory loss, poor decision making, weight gain/loss, and impaired growth and mental development. In other cases, people with insomnia also experience an inability to handle stress and have trouble forming relationships.
Insomnia can be of different types. Most people who have trouble sleeping fall into the class of intermittent insomnia where they get sleep but wake up briefly throughout the night. Some other forms of insomnia include chronic insomnia, which is a main cause for daytime sleepiness, trouble sleeping lasting several weeks or months, and insomnia that persists beyond a month. Chronic insomnia is characterised by the sufferer often waking up during the night but still unable to fall asleep again. If it persists over a month, it is likely to be fibromyalgia.
The most serious form of insomnia is insomnia resulting from a medical sleep disorder, such as sleep apnea. Sleep apnea is usually caused by an obstruction in the airway that makes it difficult to breathe while sleeping. Other sleep disorders such as restless leg syndrome, polysomnias, and narcolepsy are also causes of insomnia. They are all serious conditions requiring immediate medical intervention.
Other causes of insomnia are poor sleep habits such as poor diet, drinking, smoking, and drug abuse. These habits make it difficult to fall asleep and stay asleep. Also, insomnia may be caused by physical problems such as: physical pain, physical stress, or muscle weakness. Other physical factors that contribute to difficulty sleeping are: being overweight, having poor blood circulation, and/or an abnormal hormone level that affects the body’s ability to relax and fall asleep.
Whatever the cause of your insomnia, one thing is for certain – you need to get treatment for it. Even if you can fall asleep at will, your body still needs to be rested, refreshed, and your brain stimulated. Even if you have a natural tendency to sleep late, if you consistently fail to do so, your body will become exhausted and tired and cannot perform as well as it can when you sleep in a regular routine.
The best way to overcome insomnia is to find a natural cure for it. This means that you need to learn how to develop a consistent sleep routine. Also, avoid alcohol, tobacco, drugs, chocolate, and caffeinated beverages. All these things are known to be contributors to insomnia.