Do you have difficulties in sleeping? How often are you awake in the middle of the night and looking at the ceiling until the morning? Do you suffer from bad consequences of your lack of sleep such as irritability, lack of concentration, fatigue and the like? If you get some above signs, it proved that you are having a condition called insomnia.
Insomnia is characterized by a person's inability to fall asleep, and can take a toll on a person's daily activities. This is because insomnia can severely affect one's mood, energy and ability to function during the day. In fact, severe insomnia may even cause other health problems such as high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease.
What Causes Insomnia?
For most of the time, insomnia is caused by some underlying condition. This gives rise to what is known as secondary insomnia. Secondary insomnia is the most common type of insomnia and accounts for more than 80% of all insomnia cases.
Primary insomnia is a condition all on its own and is not caused by any other underlying factors.
Insomnia can be caused by psychological or physiological conditions. Some psychological causes include:
1) Anxiety - This is a condition where the person feels tense, helpless, worried, afraid and uncertain. Anxiety may be due to social stresses, relationship problems, financial worries and other causes.
2) Depression is characterized by feelings of sadness, discouragement and despair.
3) Stress - Stress refers to how one person can effectively cope with physical, social, economic and other factors that require a certain response.
Some situations and events may also cause insomnia, but insomnia caused by these events are usually transient or temporary.
1) Jet Lag - Travelling across different time zones can change a person's body clock and can cause insomnia.
2) Night Shifts - Different working hours or long working hours can cause troubles in sleeping habits.
3) Adjustment Sleep Disorder - This is caused by a traumatic event such as an illness or a loss of a close person. This can also be triggered by minor events such as arguments.
4) Environmental factors, noise, temperature and other factors of the environment can also cause sleeplessness.
Sometimes, the cause for insomnia may just come from within you. Some physical causes include:
1) Hormones - Women usually suffer from hormonal changes brought about by menstruation, pregnancy, lactation and menopause.
2) Decrease of Melantonin - Melantonin is the hormone of the body that controls sleep. As a person ages, however, the production of this hormone also decreases as well.
3) Genes - Some people are just predisposed to developing insomnia.
4) Sleep Apnea - This is a condition where a person temporarily stops breathing while asleep, and this may cause insomnia as well.
These are just a few common causes of insomnia, and there still more factors that may play a role in the development of the condition. Oftentimes, only one factor causes the condition, but sometimes, it may be an interplay between several causes.
Finding out what causes your insomnia is very important, as it should be the first thing to be addressed. When you do, you can work on the underlying condition and at the same time you can follow some techniques that will help you get that night's rest that you deserve.
Top 3 Causes Explains The Root Of Insomnia