While some people have no problems with sleeping, for others it can be a nightly struggle.
If you suffer from insomnia, you would have experienced trouble with falling asleep or staying asleep. About one third of the population have reported symptoms of insomnia. Not only does insomnia affect the quality of sleep, it can also impact on the quality of everyday life.
Insomnia is characterised as the persistent difficulty with falling asleep or staying asleep (or both) even when there is adequate opportunity or circumstance for sleep and results in or is associated with impairment in daytime function or anxiety and distress.
Insomnia can manifest differently. For some people, they may have trouble initially falling asleep. For others, even if they can fall asleep, they may not be able to stay asleep for as long as they would like. Or they may wake up during the night and not be able to go back to sleep for a long time. You may experience any combination of these three.
It's not surprising that disrupted sleep can make it difficult to function normally during the day and to experience forgetfulness, irritability, anxiety (general anxiety or sleep anxiety) and tension headaches.
There are lots of different reasons for what causes insomnia. Sometimes it can occur for no obvious reason and other times, there can be physiological, psychological or environmental factors at play:
For some people, chronic insomnia suffers may need formal treatment such as prescription medicine or cognitive behavioral therapy. For others, practicing healthy lifestyle habits and good sleep routine may improve sleep, such as: