Stress, new sleeping environment, changes in your daily work routine, these are few factors causing insomnia or the so-called “difficulty in sleeping”. Sometimes your body do the adjusting at night after your long-day work or perhaps adjusting to the new bedroom. Things like that could really get frustrating, when all you needed is a rest or sleep which cannot be granted.
Treating insomnia is same with all other syndrome. When your problem is simply the trouble of sleeping, then the first step is to trace personal and medical history, and deal with the causes of your problem. Insomnia can be a case-to-case basis. It could be categorized into three types according to duration: transient, acute and chronic insomnia. Although the causes for transient and acute are often similar, the level of disturbance is greater for short-term insomnia. Transient occurs in just less than a week while short-term could go for less than a month.
Transient and short-term insomnia factors are: stress, uncomfortable and or unusual sleeping environment, changes in the daily routine and acute medical illness. Chronic insomnia could last for a month or more. Its causes are more serious than the earlier mentioned, such as chronic medical illness, biological factors, psychophysiologic insomnia, sleep disordered breathing and the restless leg syndrome (RLS), usually being experienced by people having tedious work and then having that irritating tickling or pricking of the leg during the night. And other lifestyle factors such as caffeine intake could trigger chronic insomnia.
Taking Sleeping pills is a common information people have in order to treat insomnia but actually there are a variety of non-medical therapy effective in curing insomnia and is safer and better!
These methods include:
- avoiding daily naps and developing a regular sleeping schedule
- avoid caffeine and nicotine which are stimulating substances, especially before going to bed
- avoid alcohol which is a cause of poor sleep
- have a daily exercise during the day and not in the evening for a more sleep-conditioned body at night, and increase sunlight exposure while avoiding it at the afternoon
- maintain a comfortable bedroom, with the right temperature, light and minimal noise
- do not eat heavy meals before bedtime. Eat just light carbohydrate
Treatment with medication includes intake of a very small amount of alcohol that can motivate relaxation and sleepiness. OTC antihistamines as remedies for colds can be means of sedation or sleeping pills but this has not shown consistency in effectively curing insomnia. There are a lot more medications like anti-depressants, melatonin, benzodiazepines and herbal medications that are found to treat insomnia but it is more important for one patient to regain how to sleep.
So it is more advisable to have the non-medication treatment which is really safer and more natural way of getting back restful, long, deep sleep.
