Stress Triggers Insomnia

National Sleep Foundation has published useful information for those who can’t get asleep at night. These recommendations together with our experts’ advice will hopefully help you. This article is about so called stress-induced insomnia, or the condition of stressed mind, because of which you are unable to get asleep at night.

Sleep is as important as healthy diet and exercise, so it is important to maintain the ability to sleep enough and without disruption throughout the life. Let us start with the causes of the stress, because this is stress that disrupts sleep. The sources of stress may be:

  • Anticipated important events. For example: Christmas, birthday, meeting, birth of a child.
  • Financial problems and worries;
  • Relationship problems or problems in your family;
  • Problems with health;
  • News on TV;
  • Something that I going wrong with your work.

The described events may lead to short or prolonged stress, resulting in insomnia – either infrequent or happening regularly. Especially disturbing is regular insomnia. It affects health and the productivity of work very much.

The president of Awake in America Michele Narcavage, told in his interview during annual summit: "Without sufficient sleep, the impact of whatever situation is causing your stress can be exacerbated. Concentration, decision making, memory and reaction time are all affected by sleep deprivation."

Now let us consider the next question: How stress affects the sleep. Stress influences on the level of certain hormones in humans body. High levels of these hormones are good for our body if they are produced for several minutes, but are very harmful if they are produced constantly. For example, they make falling asleep almost impossible. And even when a person with stress falls asleep, it is often disturbed and it is not deep and healthy.

The solution of this problem sounds simple, but is not so simple to make. It is necessary to throw away all the stress you have from your life. That is the reason why struggle with stress-induces insomnia should be replaced with struggle with its source – stress itself.

Below you will find typical measures to be done in order to reduce stress. These measures are approved by National Sleep Foundation and Awake in America. Of course, none of these organizations invented these tips. They have been known for thousands of years, even in ancient Egypt. However, they, as well as our experts have summarized these tips. Here they are:

  • Do not drink stimulators like coffee after 6 p.m. Do not use alcohol as a sleeping aid – it can seriously harm your health and doesn’t helps from insomnia. It is not advised to drink more than 10 cups of coffee a day.
  • Physical activity is a good way to relieve stress. Do exercises two or three times a week, and take a long walk in a fresh air before sleep every day instead of watching TV.
  • Relaxation is a key to relieving stress. Some ways to relax: read a book, talk to your friend, play with children, knit, take a hot bath.
  • Avoid smoking before bedtime. Nicotine is a kind of stimulator.
  • Have light suppers. If you eat too much before bedtime, your body may find it difficult to fall asleep, because overeating is also a kind of stress.
  • Go to bed only when you want to sleep. Normal time to get asleep is about 20 minutes. If you don’t fall asleep during this 20-minutes period, stand up, breathe fresh air and come back when you are sleepy. If you are not sleepy in the evening, maybe you are not having enough physical activity at daytime or you sleep at day.

If these tips do not help you, you may have hormonal disorder which induces your insomnia. Maybe this disorder comes from stress. Your doctor will determine your individual problem and probably will prescribe you treatment with sedative medicines like Melatonin or Endep.



Leave Your Comment

Add Comment

Your Name:
Your email:
We will never publish your email. We will use only to contact with you.
 Receive answers on email
Message:

Confirm code Confirm code: