This is the actual type of insomnia that you don't want to experience. It's the one that carries on for months to year that really impair you as a person.
Studies have shown that insomnia runs in the families. If you are a person that has had family members with insomnia problems, you're more likely to experience insomnia yourself.
In most causes of chronic insomnia, there have been abnormal levels of certain brain chemicals observed in some sufferers.
- Melatonin - Low levels of melatonin have sometimes been observed in chronic insomnia
- Stress Hormones - Studies have shown persistently high levels of stress hormones, like cortisol, from sufferers. When you have high amounts of cortisol, your REM sleep is actually reduced. Some studies have found cortisol may only be a symptom of bad sleeping, rather than the reason for insomnia.
- Growth Hormones - As you get older, you stop secreting certain hormones that are associated with sleep. It's just something that happens to people over time. You just need less and less sleep, as you get older. There is obviously a point when this gets too bad.
Emotional disorders and other psychological issues can have a huge effect on chronic insomnia.
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Bipolar disorder
You could also be experiencing emotional problems. There isn't much knowledge on whether one causes the other, but they seem to be intertwined.
There is also another case for this called psychophysiologic insomnia. It's when the symptoms of a psychological and physical nature cause the insomnia. It's unclear if one causes the other, but they're definitely related to each other.
- A person may start to view their bed, not as a place of sleep and relaxation, but as a place of a struggle to get to sleep. This association snowballs the whole insomnia problem.
- Some sort of transient insomnia disrupts a person's circadian rhythm and they can't get it back to normal.
- Anxiety will eventually come to the surface as events repeat over and over again. Bedtime will be associated with anxiety due to the failure of getting sleep.
- This will eventually lead to a person being triggered, automatically, which causes anxiety and an over active worried mind. It turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy that a person just can't escape.
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