Answering The Question Do I Have Insomnia?

Everyone needs to sleep – it’s as necessary to a healthy body as eating well, exercising enough and taking care of yourself. Going without sleep can greatly hurt your quality of life – it makes your days crappy and seem to last forever, you stop enjoying things because they become a hassle in your tired state and you miss a lot of opportunities because you’re just too tired to participate. So how do you know if you’re actually suffering from insomnia and it’s not just a few sleepless nights? And to go about answering the question of “do I have insomnia?” so you can fix it you have to actually figure out if what you’re suffering from in insomnia or just a few rough nights.

First, figure out if you have trouble actually falling asleep – many people don’t sleep the second their head hits the pillow but it should not take you an hour or more to wind down and fall asleep.  Secondly, do you wake up at night often for seemingly no reason and have to struggle to get back to sleep?  And you have to take into account other symptoms as well, like waking up in the morning feeling like you didn’t sleep at all anyway.  Even things like waking up feeling like you haven’t actually slept are signs that you probably have insomnia.

To cure insomnia you have to figure out what causes it and that’s where things get a little tricky because insomnia has many different causes.  By far the most common cause of insomnia is life-related stress: worrying over bills, a job or even smaller things can keep the brain from shutting down at night and case insomnia.  Other causes include mental disorders like post traumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder and even clinical depression.  Even things like medications or jet lag can set off insomnia in some people, so take that all into account when asking, “Do I have insomnia?”

After finding out if you do have insomnia many people wonder how they can do about curing it.  One of the ways insomnia is cured is by cognitive behavioral therapy – a sufferer is taught proper sleep habits and ways to relieve their stress so that they can to sleep.  This therapy often works so well because it not only teaches people good sleep habits but also allows doctor to find out what the root cause of the insomnia is and take care of it.  Medication is also an option although doctors are way of it because it can often lead to dependence.