Insomnia: types, causes, what to do and how to fall asleep without medication

Ah, insom­nia … An unin­vit­ed guest who always stays overnight with­out an invi­ta­tion. And you won’t fall asleep with such guests: you lie in the dark, look at your own thoughts with eyes wide shut, chew on the events of the day again and peer long­ing­ly into the bright­en­ing twi­light out­side the win­dow. The wake-up call is like an amnesty. You can final­ly get out of bed and trudge to work, bear­ing all the signs of a sleep­less night on your face: gray skin, dark cir­cles under red eyes and sad­ly low­ered cor­ners of unsmil­ing lips.

If a insom­nia vis­its you infre­quent­ly, you can some­how endure it and cope with it on your own and with home reme­dies. But when it comes con­stant­ly, turn­ing your whole life into a com­plete lack of sleep, you need to go to the doc­tor. If pos­si­ble, go to a som­nol­o­gist who deals with sleep prob­lems. By the way, doc­tors call insom­nia an unde­served­ly beau­ti­ful word “insom­nia”.

Types of insomnia and its causes

Insom­nia can man­i­fest itself in many ways. She won’t let any­one sleep. A per­son lies in his bed, even being phys­i­cal­ly tired, but sleep does not come.

Oth­ers suf­fer from the fact that sleep is inter­rupt­ed all the time. Some­times there are rea­sons for this — a loud sound, a cat jump­ing onto the bed, the snor­ing of a spouse sleep­ing next door. Some­times there are no obvi­ous rea­sons, but the unfor­tu­nate one still wakes up every hour, or even more often.

Still oth­ers suf­fer from wak­ing up too ear­ly. There are still two hours before the alarm clock, and sleep is already in one eye. And there is no point in lying down, and get­ting up ear­ly. But with the onset of morn­ing, an unbear­able desire returns from nowhere to sleep the lost hours.

The most unlucky can get all types of insom­nia at once: they fall asleep hard, wake up often, and can no longer fall asleep again.

It is clear that the body is rapid­ly tired from lack of sleep and weak­ens. Insom­nia can lead to depres­sion, neu­ro­sis, exac­er­ba­tion of heart dis­ease and pres­sure surges. Immu­ni­ty is also reduced, not to men­tion per­for­mance, endurance, abil­i­ty to remem­ber and think fruit­ful­ly.

What can cause insomnia?

• Uncom­fort­able bed: duvet too heavy, mat­tress too thin/hard/soft/sagging, pil­low too soft/hard/tall/thin, squeaky springs, wrong posi­tion.
• Stuffi­ness and dry­ness of the air in the bed­room.
• Bright lights and loud sounds.
• Exces­sive­ly large din­ner, includ­ing dish­es that the stom­ach is hard to cope with.
• Hunger. For exam­ple, when a woman decides to fol­low a strict diet and “not eat after 18”.
• Stress at work or at home, inabil­i­ty or unwill­ing­ness to leave them out­side the bed­room.
• Over­work, phys­i­cal or ner­vous.
• Phys­i­cal inac­tiv­i­ty.
• Abuse of caf­feinat­ed drinks.
• Tak­ing cer­tain drugs that act on the ner­vous sys­tem excit­ing.
• Dif­fi­cul­ty breath­ing asso­ci­at­ed with an attack of aller­gies or bronchial asth­ma, cough­ing with bron­chi­tis, tuber­cu­lo­sis, etc.
• Dis­eases that cause pain in the joints, mus­cles, abdomen, or oth­er parts of the body. It can be gout, and gas­tri­tis, and ton­sil­li­tis, and many oth­ers.
• Dis­eases asso­ci­at­ed with the appear­ance of skin rash and itch­ing: eczema, aller­gies, der­mati­tis, measles, chick­en­pox, her­pes.
• Dis­eases that cause fre­quent urge to uri­nate or defe­cate: cys­ti­tis, intesti­nal flu, sal­mo­nel­losis, etc.

How to get rid of insomnia

First of all, you need to stop wor­ry­ing, includ­ing about the fact that “today I won’t be able to sleep again.” Any­thing that makes you ner­vous gives extra points to insom­nia. If you can’t cope with your own ner­vous sys­tem on your own, turn to the help of light plant-based seda­tives.

• Get out of bed on time: no lat­er than 23 hours.
• Make your­self a com­fort­able bed: buy a new bed with an ortho­pe­dic mat­tress and a com­fort­able pil­low. In win­ter, it is most com­fort­able to sleep on fleece or baize bed­ding, in sum­mer you can treat your­self to the pleas­ant cool­ness of silk or smooth satin.
• Take care of the cor­rect air tem­per­a­ture in the bed­room. It should not exceed 20°C. Humid­i­ty is also very impor­tant. If you don’t have a humid­i­fi­er, hang some damp ter­ry tow­els in your bed­room. The air should be fresh — it is bet­ter to sleep in a ven­ti­lat­ed room.
• Don’t overeat at night. Din­ner should be light, from dairy or plant prod­ucts. It is advis­able to avoid not only cof­fee and cocoa, but also too strong tea at din­ner.
• Before going to bed, it is advis­able to take a leisure­ly walk in the fresh air. Active phys­i­cal activ­i­ty is unde­sir­able — it excites the ner­vous sys­tem and then pre­vents you from falling asleep nor­mal­ly.
• It is use­ful to take a warm bath for 20 min­utes, it is pos­si­ble with herbs or essen­tial oils. Cold or too hot show­ers are best avoid­ed.
• Do not watch thrillers, dra­mas and news at night. Bet­ter read some­thing bor­ing.