If you too wake up in the morning feeling as tired as if you never slept at all, don't skip this article
A writer who has studied sleep for a long time, upon looking it up in the Larousse dictionary, found that the entry for the word sleep pointed to "see: to sleep," and when he looked up the meaning of the verb to sleep, he found "the state of being asleep." Defining insomnia is even more difficult than defining sleep. This is because insomnia is a subjective experience, felt by the patient and varying from person to person. Insomnia presents itself as a much shorter sleep duration than what should normally occur, and sometimes as a shortening of the sleep duration the person was previously accustomed to and found sufficient. But in fact, the quality of sleep has much more to do with feeling refreshed than with its duration.
The most common form of insomnia we encounter is insomnia that appears as difficulty falling asleep. In this type of insomnia, the process of falling asleep takes many hours, and the inability to fall asleep creates extreme distress in the person. This feeling of distress causes the time spent trying to fall asleep to be perceived as even longer than it actually is. In some patients, the distress of not being able to fall asleep begins even before going to bed, sometimes even as evening approaches. Patients begin to worry hours in advance about whether they will be able to sleep that night. Conversely, some patients fall asleep easily but have difficulty staying asleep. They wake up at the slightest noise they hear while sleeping, or at their partner's movements, and have great difficulty falling back asleep. Over time, such people may even develop feelings of hostility toward those who wake them up. Another form of insomnia occurs as waking up before dawn and being unable to fall back asleep. People who experience this generally also have depressive complaints. Although they may be able to fall asleep without problems, to some extent, they wake up before dawn and cannot sleep again.
IT HAS BECOME VERY WIDESPREAD RECENTLY
A rarer form of insomnia than the ones above, but worse than all of them, is not being able to sleep at all. Sometimes, patients complain of not waking up rested in the morning even though they have no complaints about their nighttime sleep. This condition should also be evaluated as a type of insomnia. Patients suffering from insomnia generally also experience problems during the day. While not all patients do, some of them, to varying degrees, complain of fatigue and irritability, of being hurtful toward their friends and family, of decreased physical and mental performance, and of memory and concentration disorders. Sometimes headaches, burning eyes, and nausea can also be added to this picture. Sometimes the cause of the inability to sleep can be a psychological or neurological problem. It is a well-known fact that psychological or neurological problems cause people to be unable to sleep. If the patient is using psychiatric medications, they may have been exposed to the side effects of these medications, and their sleep will likely return to normal once the medications are discontinued.
Problems related to falling asleep, maintaining sleep, and ending sleep, along with non-restorative sleep, are characterized as insomnia. Daytime fatigue, mood changes (such as restlessness and irritability), decreased productivity, and even impairment of cognitive functions accompany the general picture of insomnia.
According to studies conducted, insomnia, which is seen in approximately 10-15% of adults—a large proportion—has also become quite widespread in our country in recent times.
At the root of this condition, which is seen quite frequently especially in older women, lie homeostatic sleep maintenance processes, that is, biological clock processes.
SLEEP DISORDER (INSOMNIA) CONDITIONS
An online survey conducted in the United Kingdom revealed that one of the most common problems among people experiencing financial difficulty and workplace stress was insomnia. This problem, defined by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) as "Acute Insomnia," affects a very large proportion of people under stress. When the stressful situation is resolved, people return to their previous sleep patterns.
People who have difficulty falling asleep, or who wake up frequently during sleep and cannot get quality sleep, have a high likelihood of having insomnia. People who experience this problem generally wake up early and feel tired throughout the day because they haven't gotten enough sleep. However, in order to speak of a genuine sleep problem, this situation needs to reach a level that reduces quality of life and affects normal functioning.
In addition, those who sleep less or more than needed are also candidates for many health problems, particularly cardiovascular disease. Excess sleep can lead to psychological and physiological disorders such as obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, respiratory diseases, muscle weakness, decreased physical resistance, and depression.
Excessive sleep patterns, where the primary complaint is daytime drowsiness, make up half of all sleep disorder complaints. Two important disorders fall within the category of excessive sleep patterns: the first is sleep apnea, and the second is narcolepsy.
Apnea: Sleep apnea is a cessation of breathing that lasts longer than 10 seconds and occurs more than five times during an hour of sleep. It is a life-threatening condition, claimed to cause sudden nighttime deaths, and can lead to various psychiatric symptoms such as fatigue, lack of motivation, low productivity, impaired cognitive function, and emotional instability. Its symptoms include frequent daytime sleepiness, an excessive desire to sleep, and snoring and breathing cessation during sleep. It is a very commonly seen sleep disorder.
Narcolepsy: It begins with a constant urge to sleep during the day. A person can experience dreams or hallucinations even during short naps. Muscle weakness occurs, and movements slow down after waking up. Some narcolepsy patients cannot even move after waking up. In short, narcolepsy is a condition characterized by daytime sleep attacks, nightmares, and other accompanying symptoms. It can only be diagnosed through studies conducted in sleep laboratories.
Bipolar: People with manic depression also sometimes cannot sleep. Especially during episodes, they can go around for days without sleeping. Moreover, despite being sleep-deprived, they don't feel tired.
For more information on this and similar topics, you can benefit from my books "Discover Life" and "The Magical Power of Sleep."
Hüseyin Nazlıkul