Insomnia Essay

The inability to get sleep, get good quality of sleep, or even stay asleep is known as insomnia. There are many causes of insomnia, both biological and environmental factors. Some of the psychological causes are mood and anxiety, past experiences, or your sleep environment. Some of the physiological causes are pain, neurological disorders, and conditions associated with difficult in breathing. Almost half of the world’s population is affected with insomnia. People with a genetic predisposition are mostly likely to suffer from insomnia, however, habits and other environmental factors relate to nurture as well.

There are many factors related to insomnia such as the mood you are currently in and if you’re feeling emotionally hopeless or depressed. These factors can be the cause of insomnia because they can be overwhelming and can take up a lot space in your head. High levels of stress can cause hyperarousal, a cluster of PTSD symptoms, causing insomnia. Additionally, feeling emotionally hopeless or depressed has the same effect (Saisan, Smith, Robinson, Segal, 2013, p. 3). It can be thoughts of suicide or sadness that lingers around your mind that causes one to be unable to sleep. Stress from traumatic events can also lead to a variety of sleep problems.

Traumatic events can cause insomnia because when the body is overstimulated, the brain is filled with chemicals that keeps us awake. Epinephrin and Adrenaline are chemicals that make it hard to fall asleep at the end of the day. If you are having flashbacks of the traumatic event or having thoughts about the event then that can cause difficulty sleeping at night. One can also fall asleep but may have nightmares that can frighten one back to consciousness. These causes are fr...

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...sue. People with Alzheimer's lose their mental abilities and that can disrupt the wake/sleep cycle, which may cause sleep problems. Restless legs syndrome is an overwhelming urge to move the legs. It is usually accompanied by an unpleasant sensation. Symptoms of restless legs are mostly severe during the night which makes it difficult to sleep. Narcolepsy is caused by the brain’s inability to regulate the wake-sleep cycle. People with narcolepsy experience excessive, uncontrollable sleepiness during the day which makes it harder to fall asleep at night (Ciccarelli & White, 2012, p. 142).

Medical conditions that are uncontrollable factors of insomnia can be enlarged prostate or diabetes and can cause excessive urination. Serious conditions like this can be frustrating and can ruin one’s pleasant night’s sleep. Excessive urination at night is also called nocturia.