Treatment for Insomnia

Acute insomnia may not require treatment. Mild insomnia often can be prevented or cured by practicing good sleep habits (see below). If your insomnia makes it hard for you to function during the day because you are sleepy and tired, your health careprovider may prescribe sleeping pills for a limited time. Rapid onset, short-acting drugs can help you avoid effects such as drowsiness the following day. Avoid using over-the-counter sleeping pills for insomnia, because they may have undesired side effects and tend to lose their effectiveness over time.

Treatment for chronic insomnia includes first treating any underlying conditions or health problems that are causing the insomnia. If insomnia continues, your health care provider may suggest behavioral therapy. Behavioral approaches help you to change behaviors that may worsen insomnia and to learn new behaviors to promote sleep. Techniques such as relaxation exercises, sleep restriction therapy, and reconditioning may be useful.

Besides stress, there are other causes of insomnia such as decreased production of melatonin, asthma, arthritis, chronic pain, acid reflux, hyperthyroidism etc.

As Arvind stated there are many causes of insomnia besides stress, i think sleep disorders should be treated by sleep hygiene measures and psychotherapy if stress is the main cause, but you have to take into account that sleep disorders have strong negative effects on health and general cognition so if a patient is suffering them i would recommend to take medication and combine it with therapy, after a time you can partially remove the medication (if it's not needed).

Regards

It may be because of stress or other reasons like age factor or illness or any psychological problems.

While the location of errant sleep patterns may be the result of the matters above, each cause possibly individualistic, it seems its positioning as a cultural phenomenon is rarely investigated. Its imporatance is environmental, although its aetiology may lie elsewhere.

I suffered in the past and concluded: diet (too much coffee to begin with), needing to hit deadlines (environmental), habit. My cure-don't worry about it, its not important, I relaxed and caught up on my rest at other times and in other ways. As an independendent worker/freelance my time wasn't controlled by others (environment). As long ago sleep obtained through drugs was considered likely to be harmful as it probably does not affect the parts of the brain real sleep does-don't consider that as an option.

Stress and anxiety may cause sleeping problems or make existing problems worse. And having an anxiety disorder exacerbates the problem. ... Insomnia is the clinical term for people who have trouble falling asleep, difficulty staying asleep, waking too early in the morning, or waking up feeling unrefreshed.

Treatment for Insomnia

Acute insomnia may not require treatment. Mild insomnia often can be prevented or cured by practicing good sleep habits (see below). If your insomnia makes it hard for you to function during the day because you are sleepy and tired, your health careprovider may prescribe sleeping pills for a limited time. Rapid onset, short-acting drugs can help you avoid effects such as drowsiness the following day. Avoid using over-the-counter sleeping pills for insomnia, because they may have undesired side effects and tend to lose their effectiveness over time.

Treatment for chronic insomnia includes first treating any underlying conditions or health problems that are causing the insomnia. If insomnia continues, your health care provider may suggest behavioral therapy. Behavioral approaches help you to change behaviors that may worsen insomnia and to learn new behaviors to promote sleep. Techniques such as relaxation exercises, sleep restriction therapy, and reconditioning may be useful.

Being that stress is a major factor for many ailments, insomnia can be considered a disease even when is caused by stress. Although, of course, it is almost impossible to have one exclusive cause for a disease, there are usually multiple factors involved.

Dear Meltem

As a psychogist, I thinh that insomnia may have several reasons, chifley among them stress and anxiety. It can be treated with medication, meditation, psychoterapy and so forth. It is proved that sleeping well is a sine non condition for one's well- being.

Besr regards,

Orlando

Here is a link to my article on insomnia which appeared, in edited form, in Scientific American in Oct 2003: https://henry.olders.ca/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2003/10/Insomnia-Diploma-course.pdf

Thank you Henry, thank you all, for valuable contributions.

Henry, the attitudes of insomniacs was interesting. And also, the reverse causality between mental health (depression and anxiety) and insomnia is very helpful. Thanx again.

Best

I would consider even the tipology on insomnia, the quality of sleep when the patient actually sleeps and most of all what the patient intends for insomnia. Often there is a misperception on the actual quantity of sleep hours. As well, at first there are a few advices to help sleeping before eventual meds like avoiding electronic devices use and light, coffee and others sleep interfering factors etc. etc. Psychotherapy can help, but for a real severe insomnia can be not very helpful for the emergency of it, at least at the beginning