Why Do We Not Get Sleep?
This generation is working longer hours and for more time, yet they are sleeping for lesser hours. Researchers have spent years trying to figure out why sleep is so elusive at times. They have found many causes, although these causes shift with each generation. Finding out the root cause of your sleepless nights is the first step to improving your sleep. The most common causes are listed below:
Stress and Anxiety
While these terms are often used interchangeably when we talk, they have differences. The most important difference is that stress is rooted to a specific problem, whereas anxiety is more free form. While we may be stressed about several things, we may not be able to assign a single source to anxiety.
When we are stressed about something, we lay awake, overthinking, reworking scenarios, ruminating and worrying excessively. This makes our body think we are in a dangerous situation and triggers our fight or flight response which increases cortisol levels and prevents us from sleeping. This becomes a vicious cycle, that night our body does not get the chemicals released during deep sleep which reduces stress levels. The next night, we lay awake again, thinking about how stressed we are, and the cycle continues.
Anxiety makes it difficult to fall asleep and a nocturnal panic attack can even wake someone up. It makes it very difficult to go back to sleep after this.
Nightmares
Nightmares are a normal reaction to stress and may even help a person work through a traumatic experience. Frequent nightmares can become a disorder when it begins to affect our normal functioning in any area of our lives like social or occupational. It can be caused due to medication, genes, trauma, etc.
Sleep Apnea
This is a medical condition where a person's breathing stops and starts erratically while asleep. The extra effort required by the body to continue breathing can cause a person to wake up. A rare form of sleep apnea, called central sleep apnea, occurs when signals from the brain to your muscles decrease or stop for a short time. It is best to consult your doctor for advice on how to cope with this condition.
Restless Leg Syndrome and Periodic Limb Movement Disorder
These are neurological disorders characterised by uncomfortable leg sensations that can interfere with falling asleep. It can be caused due to an iron deficiency or dopamine imbalance in the brain. Most people with Restless Leg syndrome also have Periodic Limb Movement Disorder (PLMD). PLMD is a condition in which a person's limbs - usually, one or both legs - involuntarily and rhythmically move several times during the night. The difference between these two sleep disorders is that PLMD is an involuntary action.
Depression
Inability to sleep is one of the symptoms of depression. It becomes harder to regulate one's emotion when one is sleep deprived. It also interferes with a person's energy levels and mood.
Several studies have shown a relationship between sleep deprivation or insomnia with major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder and even put teens at a significantly greater risk for depression and suicide.
Alcohol and Other Substance Abuse
Sleep and addiction are intricately linked. Many people use alcohol or other drugs to help them fall asleep and treat their insomnia, and become addicted as a result. Studies have also shown that a person who uses alcohol to fall asleep is likely to wake up during later part of the night as the relaxing effect of alcohol wears off, leaving them more fatigued the next day.
Eating Disorders
Sleep monitoring studies showed that women with eating disorders tend to take longer to fall asleep, were less likely to sleep efficiently and were more likely to wake up easily during sleep. Anorexia has been found to interrupt normal sleep patterns, possibly due to malnutrition and excessive weight loss. Research suggests that individuals with anorexia get less restful sleep than people of normal weight, resulting in next-day tiredness. Bulimia is often characterised by eating binges and purges during the night, interfering with a good night's sleep.
Poor Lifestyle
People today have very poor sleep hygiene. We spend long hours in front of screens, that disrupts the release of melatonin, a sleep-inducing hormone. We eat too close to our bedtime, making it harder to fall asleep, we workout late at night, which causes arousal in the body, having similar effects as stress does. A large majority of us does not eat healthy, and research has shown that eating less fibrous foods, and higher saturated fats even for one day can disrupt your sleep cycle.
Once you have identified the cause, you can address the problem to aid your sleep. This can mean getting medical help for substance abuse, eating disorders, neurological disorder; or can mean changing your lifestyle.
