Warning Signs Of Insomnia

Getting a full night of high-quality sleep is essential to living a productive, happy life. Sleep doesn't just give us energy; our bodies perform many vital processes while we're asleep like regulating our hormones, flushing out toxins, and helping our muscles recover and tissues grow. Sleeping also helps our brain make sense of memories. The average adult human has between fifty to seventy thousand thoughts every day, which is lots of information for our brains to process. When we sleep, our temperatures drop, heart rates slow, and our brains can commit greater energy towards processing our thoughts and experiences.

Millions of individuals struggle to fall or stay asleep. While stress and other factors can impact how well we rest, a chronic disturbance and inability to sleep properly is a condition known as insomnia. Read on to learn more about the common symptoms of insomnia and learn how you can help yourself if you're suffering from it.

Difficulty Falling Asleep

The most widespread problem reported by insomniacs is the inability to fall asleep. Individuals with insomnia can spend hours tossing and turning throughout the night, and even if they feel exhausted, their bodies simply won't allow them to fall asleep and get some rest. Issues with falling asleep can be caused by many things. If you're struggling with anxiety or depression, insomnia is a frequent side-effect. Rather than being able to doze off in a darkened room comfortably, your brain becomes flooded with racing thoughts and worries.

Identifying the underlying cause of insomnia and treating it appropriately can cure the disorder swiftly. Insomnia can also worsen mental health disorders as it leaves the body exhausted and unable to properly regulate its emotions. One of the best ways to start treating insomnia is to create the right sleeping environment. It sounds counterproductive, but don't stay in bed when you can't sleep. Instead of laying there for hours and growing increasingly frustrated, get up and do a quiet, monotonous activity that can help calm your thoughts and make you sleepy before returning to bed.

Continue for another warning sign of insomnia to keep an eye out for.

Waking Up At Night

It's normal to wake up a few times throughout the night, but most individuals don't have any recollection of this and can rise the next morning feeling refreshed. If you manage to fall asleep but find yourself waking up and unable to fall back asleep, insomnia could be the cause.

The human body goes through five stages of sleep every night, each of which has a unique function, such as muscle restoration and memory consolidation. When we wake up too frequently, these natural processes are disrupted, and thus, we are unable to hit the deep, most restorative stages of sleep we need to feel rested the next day.

To decrease the likelihood of waking up at night, make sure you sleep in a dark, quiet room. Some individuals find it helpful to listen to white noise such as a fan or rain sounds. Ensure the bedroom is neither too hot nor too cold; the best sleeping temperature is between sixty to sixty-seven degrees Fahrenheit.

Keep reading for more symptoms of insomnia that keep individuals up at night.

Not Feeling Rested

A natural side-effect of insomnia is not feeling rested even after you manage to fall asleep. When your body doesn't get enough sleep or doesn't hit the deeper stages of sleep, even eight hours in bed can leave you feeling tired.

We typically spend ninety minutes in each of the five stages of sleep. Insomnia disrupts this natural pattern and deprives us of the time we need to truly get the most out of our nights. Fatigue makes it challenging to get through the day, and the dread that comes with going to bed when you have insomnia can make life unbearable. To combat this, develop a bedtime routine that your brain will learn to associate with sleep, and make sure you commit to a regular sleep schedule that has you going to bed and waking up at the same time each day.

Continue for more warning signs of insomnia now.

Feeling Tired During The Day

Feeling tired during the day is something everyone experiences from time to time, but consistently feeling drained of energy is a problem. Insomnia will leave you feeling exhausted all day and make it difficult to perform your job.

It's important to make accommodations for yourself when you're struggling with insomnia. Eat a proper diet and try not to become too dependent on caffeine. Coffee and energy drinks might give us a much-needed boost to power through the work day, but too much caffeine can actually worsen insomnia. Caffeine levels in an eight-ounce cup of coffee vary depending on the brand and type of roast. Excessive caffeine intake disrupts the body's natural sleep cycle and affects the production of essential neurochemicals that aid sleep, like melatonin and adenosine. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommends healthy adults limit their caffeine intake to four hundred milligrams a-day, which equates to about four to five cups.

Continue to learn about what element of focus may indicate insomnia.

Problems With Focus

Problems with focus aren't strange to individuals with insomnia. Naturally, when your body has to use most of its energy to stay awake, concentrating on other tasks becomes a serious challenge.

Without enough sleep, your brain can experience something known as cognitive lapses. Being tired causes neurons to fire slower than they should, which causes delayed reactions. These cognitive lapses also make it more difficult to comprehend information. Rachel E. Salas, an assistant professor of neurology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, described an insomniac's brain as "a light switch that's always on."

Insomnia doesn't just impact patients at night; a continued lack of restful sleep affects day-to-day functioning. The great news is there are many treatments for insomnia. Try out some home remedies yourself, but if you can't seem to kick your chronic sleepiness to the curb, talk to your doctor and explore your options. They may be able to identify an underlying cause or prescribe a sleep aid to help you catch up on some sleep.