Insomnia simply means sleeplessness. In medical parlance, it is a chronic inability to get to sleep or to stay asleep or early waking. Anyway, most of us enjoy sleep which is a naturally altered state of consciousness occurring in humans in a 24-hour biological rhythm.
A sleep cycle consists of alternating cycles of Non-Rapid Eye Movement sleep (NREM) or orthodox sleep which has four stages and Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep or paradoxical sleep. Sleep deprivation occurs when there is interference with a person’s established rhythm of paradoxical sleep.
It can result in tiredness, feeling cold, headaches, reduced appetite, slurred rambling speech, irritability, disorientation, confusion, slowed reaction time, poor coordination, inability to perform skilled tasks, poor concentration and mood swings. Insomnia is one of the sleep disorders, the others being nightmares, sleep terror and sleep walking.
If you are unable to sleep, you tend to take sleeping pills to get over the problem. Modern research has found that insomnia can be tackled without taking sleeping pills the effect of which may last less than three hours. Very soon you will depend on pills without knowing that you have been caught in insomnia’s trap.
When you awake, you will feel that your condition is worse now than when you went to bed. On the other hand, the miasma of the vivid nightmare will still haunt you. You might reach for the bottle containing sleeping pills. According to medical opinion, this is something very dangerous.
Recent research has confirmed the view that taking sleeping pills can be habit-forming. What is more, if you take one sleeping pill, you are likely to increase the number of pills thinking that such a course of action will produce sleep. The latest findings indicate that insomnia should be managed without resort to sleeping pills which should be reserved to assuage the sleeplessness that accompanies grief, trauma, illness or other crises.
However, chronic insomnia should be treated by a medical specialist. For others who suffer from insomnia on and off, relief can be found in a mix of rhythm and ritual, regular exercise and common sense.
Insomniacs
Insomnia is not a total lack of sleep. According to medical experts, such a situation does not exist. If you complain that you did not have a wink of sleep, you are simply complaining how the night felt to you. Insomniacs are not those who cannot sleep but those who take a long time to fall asleep. Another category of insomniacs wakes up too early and begin to doze off again. Other insomniacs remain awake during the night. According to a rough estimate, one in seven people suffer from chronic insomnia.
If you know what sleep means, most of the problems can be solved. An untroubled night of sleep for a healthy adult consists of five or six long, rolling, waves of electrical intensity, each lasting about 90 minutes. The person who sleeps first enters the wide deep trough called ‘delta.’ Then he rides the wave up until it breaks into another stage called REM (Rapid Eye Movement). Then he goes through another delta trough. Sometimes, he will see dreams during the delta stages. Babies spend much time in REM than do adults. The reason is that REM tends to decrease in old age.
Sleep-inducing drugs are usually REM suppressants. They produce abnormal sleep patterns which can cause troubles later. According to Dr Anthony Kales, Professor of Psychiatry at Pennsylvania State University, there have been sleeping pill suicides and accidental deaths in many parts of the world.
According to the latest findings, there are practical methods of dealing with insomnia. In the first place, anybody who is subject to insomnia should get a correct diagnosis of the cause. This is, perhaps, the main requirement for a drug-free cure. The only problem is that there are many causes, some of them are physiological and others are psychological. This is due to the shifts in your biological rhythm. A doctor can prescribe medicine after finding out the symptoms. However, if you wish to keep away from pills, you will have to search for the cause that really troubles you.
Psychological causes
There can be many psychological causes for insomnia. If you are worried about your daughter who is not willing to get married and keeps on postponing marriage, that might not allow you to have a sound sleep. Similarly, if your spouse is unfaithful to you, you might end up with insomnia. In such cases, counselling will be a better method of treatment than drugs.
When people are leading stressful lives, they have very little time for amusement or exercises. If you can engage yourself in some simple exercises such as brisk walking or swimming, you will not have any difficulty in sleeping. If you travel to your workplace by bus or train, make it a point to walk rather than use a trishaw. Your busy schedule should not be an excuse. All living beings need some form of exercise. Even animals do not stay in one place. They always run here and there not knowing that they are doing exercises.
Your body has a natural rhythm. You walk and work with subtle physical movements. After retirement, some people spend much time for sleeping at night and daytime. When a retired friend told me that he went to bed at 8 p.m. every day, I got a mild shock. He does not watch television or read newspapers. Such people try to live by their internal clocks not by the clocks on their tables.
If you go to bed at a particular time, follow that routine regularly. However, make it a point not to sleep too early or too late. An adult needs at least seven hours of sleep. It is debatable whether you should drink a glass of hot milk before retiring to bed. Some people claim that hot milk has a soporific effect.
If you are not feeling sleepy, do not go to bed and lie down. There are many ways to use your leisure time. Use that precious time to read a novel, watch a movie on television or listen to a song. This is also the time to renew friendships. Write a letter or send an email to a long-forgotten friend. If your mind is tumbling like a squirrel in a cage, think of doing something fruitful and pleasant. Draw up a plan of what things you have to do tomorrow. If you do such activities, you will enjoy a blissful night.