Sleeplessness, symptoms and treatment

It is for sure that each of us at least once in his or her life suffered from insomnia.
Probably it occurred at night before an exam or before an important meeting when you tried to lie down earlier to have a proper sleep. But instead of this you couldn’t sleep and your brain was analyzing different scrolling variants of a forthcoming meeting. Or if we take another example when after a hard working day when you literally “fall asleep on the move” you laid down in a bed imaging a good rest but instead of it you feel that the bed is uncomfortable, it produces hardly distinguishable but irritating sounds and the desire to sleep irrevocably disappears.
30-45% of people regularly experience this and a half of them get insomnia as a chronic disease.

Jacob Bogatin proclaims that there are three stages of a common type of insomnia:

The first stage includes difficulties of the beginning of a sleep (presomnian frustration), i.e. problems with falling asleep. The person is gradually trying to think over an upcoming sleep when actually his/her brain is still in the peak stage of activity. The fear of “sleep never coming” blocks the normal slowdown of brain’s activity.

Frustration of the second stage (intrasomnic frustration) results in frequent night awakenings from sounds or from a restless sleep, a nightmare, sensation of pains, infringement of breath, sharp movements after which a person can not manage to sleep for a long time.

And at last, on the third stage (postsomniac) there is a problem of a complicated morning awakening, the lowered working capacity, sensation of weakness, drowsiness.

There are also cases when a person complains with the following words: "I have not closed eyes during the whole night". After a close examination a doctor finds out that the patient sleeps even less than hours a day! J.Bogatin thinks that this is a deformed perception of a sleep and can lead to chronic insomnia.

So, if the problem of sleeplessness comes out and knocks at your door – the problem may be solved in a simple way – you are to learn to sleep correctly!

Jacob Bogatin recommends to try to draw up a schedule of work and rest, a warm and soothing bath is necessary to calm your nerves before going to sleep and probably a course of autotraining will be wise to take up.

When sleeplessness is caused by strong weariness or stress you can take soporific medicines though it is absolutely a must to remember that you should follow the given prescription as well as medicine’s instruction. The duration (the period when medicine may be taken) should not exceed 10-14 days.

If all the measures mentioned above do not help you and you still can not fall asleep and suffer the attacks of insomnia – you should definitely consult a somnologist. Jacob Bogatin: "Probably, additional inspection will be required from a neuropathologist. For insomnia treatment it is wise to take some physiotherapeutic procedures, phototherapy, an acupuncture course and a psychotherapy course as well".