Andrew Jones’ Blog

The Insomnia sleep disorder is also known as Wakefulness or Dysomnia and is an inability to sleep, or to sleep for long enough to get a proper night’s rest. It can have the effect of making you feel constantly tired.

Sleep is necessary to repair the body and provide mental and physical rest – to recharge your batteries. Without sleep, or when sleep is insufficient or disturbed over a long period, you may find your concentration and coordination is poor and you may become irritable.

A typical sleep cycle has 5 stages: drowsiness, light sleep, two deep sleep stages followed by REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, where most dreams occur. This first five stage cycle usually lasts about 90 minutes. The REM stage for subsequent cycles may be longer. You may have five of these cycles in a typical night’s sleep.

The amount of sleep needed by people varies: Babies need about 17 hours sleep a day, a child nine to ten hours per night, and an adult seven to eight hours each night, though that typically decreases as you get older. If you don’t need much sleep, get up early to do things – don’t spend too long in bed as this can help trigger insomnia.

There are two main types of insomnia:

Primary Insomnia – where there is no underlying medical cause for the difficulty in sleeping.

Secondary Insomnia – where there is an underlying medical cause disturbing sleep.

By duration:

transient ——-> short term ————-> long term (chronic)

few nights —–> up to 3 weeks ——–> more than 3 weeks

Fear Insomnia - after failing to sleep for a few nights, you become anxious fearing that you won’t sleep again, which then further prevents the onset of natural sleep.

Seasonal Affective Disorder – due to changes in length of Day & Night

Sleep Apnea: this is a condition where the sufferer stops breathing for a short time

If you suspect that you an underlying condition, including Sleep Apnea or Seasonal Affective Disorder which is causing your insomnia, then you should consult a doctor.

So that’s the basics on what insomnia is, check other posts for how to tackle it!

Cheers,

Andy.