Symptoms of insomnia

 

What do a sunken Exxon fuel tanker sank, a nuclear meltdown, and mysterious sickness that claimed a family tree have in common? They are caused by sleep deprivation. If you think this is a piece of trivia, better have second thoughts.

History has repeatedly shown us that insomnia can be really damaging. This disorder can cause billions of dollars to go down the pipe and can leave people dead in its trail. An estimate in America has pegged the price at half a billion dollars each year. Before more lives and money will be at risks, identifying the symptoms of insomnia is one step closer to recovery and prevention, for companies and individuals alike.

You have to be careful and be alarmed when you cannot go to sleep in five consecutive days or longer. Mostly, you do not know what keeps you awake, and what can make you asleep. Doctors recommend many sleep inducing night rituals, like making the room dark, reading and lulling yourself to sleep, following a regular bedtime, etc. But if any of these measures do not work, insomnia might be starting to show.

 

This disorder can also manifest itself when you cannot maintain a good night sleep. For example, you wake up in the middle of the night, and then go back to sleep, and wake up again. This condition is bad because it disturbs your bodily processes (like muscle-building, low heartbeat, etc). Also the most important part of sleep, the rapid-eye-movement or the deepest part of sleeping where your dreams take place, will be impossible to achieve.

One of the symptoms of insomnia is the inability to go back to sleep after waking up. Unlike the previous condition, you wake up at the middle of the night and find yourself unable to go back to your dreamland. You keep on tossing around your bed, but your mind is fully active. While you can shut your physical eyes, it’s the mental eyes that you can’t.

Lastly, you cannot feel refresh when you wake up in the morning. Because of the lack of rest both of your brain and body, you feel that the night has not yet ended and your sleep incomplete. You become drowsy most of the day. You may also forget small bits of information like contact numbers of your friends, name of the pet of your mother, etc.

 

Aside from knowing the basic symptoms of insomnia, it is important to learn that the disease is categorized according to their duration. A transient insomnia, which affects about 50 million Americans each year, lasts from about a few days to several weeks. Patients can suffer fatigue and less active mental and physical conditions, like less focus at work and forgetfulness on simple details.

An acute insomnia is a condition of sleeping disorder that lasts about three to six months. The effects are more serious and pronounced, like the loss of focus on a task at hand. The last condition, called chronic insomnia, lasts from six months to several years.