Sleep Disorder Treatments: Medications or Stress Management?

There is a well-known joke that peo­ple spend about 30% of their lives in a dream, and they dream of sleep­ing the rest of the time. And there is a lot of truth in this joke. Such a lux­u­ry as full-fledged healthy sleep is avail­able only to a few, every­one else has lim­it­ed sleep time due to work or life cir­cum­stances, which sig­nif­i­cant­ly affects the over­all health and stress lev­el of the body. A large per­cent­age of peo­ple take med­ica­tion to com­bat insom­nia. What do you need to improve sleep?

The role of healthy sleep for health

Many peo­ple believe that one or two sleep­less nights will not affect their well-being and health in any way. How­ev­er, not every­one suc­ceeds in get­ting a good night’s sleep after such nights. It is impor­tant to know: in order to elim­i­nate lack of sleep after a night shift or insom­nia at night, to elim­i­nate their neg­a­tive impact on the body, you need at least two full nights of sound sleep. If sleep is con­stant­ly dis­turbed, it threat­ens with sig­nif­i­cant health prob­lems that form as fatigue accu­mu­lates. Night sleep, and some­times also day­time rest, is need­ed in order to accu­mu­late the ener­gy that is need­ed dur­ing the wake­ful­ness peri­od. In addi­tion, dur­ing the time a per­son sleeps, the ner­vous sys­tem is restruc­tured. The periph­er­al nerves also rest, although they do not com­plete­ly stop their work.

If the sleep process is disturbed: stress, memory, risk of pathologies

If the process­es of falling asleep are dis­turbed, if night sleep is dis­turbed in terms of its quan­ti­ty or qual­i­ty, the gen­er­al con­di­tion and func­tion­ing of the ner­vous sys­tem suf­fers. First of all, work­ing capac­i­ty decreas­es, weak­ness and fatigue are felt, atten­tion is dis­turbed and short-term mem­o­ry wors­ens. The work of hor­mones changes, the num­ber of those respon­si­ble for stress increas­es. Sleep depri­va­tion or poor sleep qual­i­ty has been proven to increase the risk of strokes or heart attacks, again due to a per­son being under con­stant stress. There are peo­ple who, with a short sleep, can sleep well — they risk their health less than those who sleep both lit­tle and bad­ly. In this case, a per­son expe­ri­ences severe stress, he is con­stant­ly tired, his immu­ni­ty decreas­es, and depres­sion can form. To elim­i­nate all these phe­nom­e­na, it is nec­es­sary not only to sleep once, but also to nor­mal­ize sleep for the rest of the time.

How to determine normal sleep time?

Every­one knows rough­ly how much sleep they need to feel alert and rest­ed. How­ev­er, the stan­dard­ized sleep time of 8 hours is not suit­able for all of the peo­ple, since in many respects the dura­tion of sleep depends on its qual­i­ty and the phys­i­o­log­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics of metab­o­lism. There are quite healthy peo­ple who need no more than 5–6 hours for a good rest, while none of their body sys­tems suf­fer. Oth­ers, in order to ful­ly rest and recov­er, require at least 9–10 hours of sleep, and this is also quite nor­mal. There­fore, before tak­ing med­ica­tions that affect sleep, you just need to ful­ly relax and get enough sleep. It’s also pos­si­ble that get­ting up ear­ly and going to bed late does­n’t suit your bio­rhythms.

When can you talk about insomnia?

From the point of view of med­i­cine, the term insom­nia is not entire­ly cor­rect, because there are no peo­ple who do not sleep at all, while this con­cept is lit­er­al­ly trans­lat­ed that way. Often peo­ple sim­ply do not remem­ber their dream, even if it was bad, and it seems to them that they did not sleep at all at night. There­fore, the most cor­rect term for sleep dis­or­ders would be insom­nia, sleep depri­va­tion. Such a chron­ic con­di­tion, in which the time of sleep is sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduced, as well as its qual­i­ty, can be acquired fair­ly quick­ly. If a per­son sleeps poor­ly for lit­er­al­ly two to three weeks, this leads to insom­nia. If sleep is dis­turbed for sev­er­al days in a row, you should not start the prob­lem, you need to con­tact a neu­rol­o­gist or sleep spe­cial­ist. Dur­ing this peri­od, fair­ly easy ways to nor­mal­ize sleep can help — tak­ing seda­tives or a short course of sleep­ing pills.

If safe medications to normalize sleep?

For a long time, drugs belong­ing to the group of bar­bi­tu­rates or ben­zo­di­azepines have been used as sleep­ing pills. Although they have a pos­i­tive effect on sleep, they have many side effects and con­traindi­ca­tions, restric­tions on admis­sion, and there­fore are often replaced by safer means. So, now more and more often used drugs belong­ing to the group of Z‑drugs. They are accept­able for occa­sion­al use in healthy peo­ple. For exam­ple, if there is an impor­tant meet­ing or exam, and because of stress, sleep does not go, tak­ing bar­bi­tu­rates or ben­zo­di­azepines will lead to lethar­gy and weak­ness in the morn­ing. The use of this group of drugs gives a good rest and cheer­ful­ness the next day. Nat­u­ral­ly, we are talk­ing about a one-time use of these drugs, and not a sys­tem­at­ic one, since they are not with­out draw­backs and side effects. But com­pared to the drugs of pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions, they are much bet­ter.

If sleep prob­lems have become chron­ic, it is impor­tant not to take med­ica­tion, but to con­sult a doc­tor to find out the true cause of sleep dis­or­ders. Often this is facil­i­tat­ed by over­work, dis­rup­tion of chrono­bi­o­log­i­cal rhythms, con­stant stress, depres­sion, or even dis­eases. There­fore, tak­ing a med­i­cine instead of a full-fledged treat­ment will not give any­thing good. In addi­tion, it will form the body’s addic­tion to the drug, which will be an even greater prob­lem for the patient.

There are a num­ber of rules that will help improve sleep a lit­tle with­out pills. These include refusal to eat at night, imme­di­ate­ly before bed­time; tak­ing a warm or cool show­er before going to bed; thor­ough ven­ti­la­tion of the bed­room, and if it is not cold out­side — sleep with an open win­dow; cre­at­ing dark­ness and silence in the room where a per­son sleeps. Before going to bed, you need to give up neg­a­tive emo­tions, do some­thing calm and relax­ing, but not watch­ing bloody action movies and shock­ing news. To sleep well, it is impor­tant to observe the dai­ly rou­tine, going to bed and get­ting up at the same time.