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Understanding Insomnia
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Sleep Disorders and Other Illnesses that Contribute to Insomnia
Many medical conditions can lead to problems either getting to sleep, or maintaining a good night's sleep. Anxiety and depression are the two most common causes of sleep disturbance, but emotional pain and anguish that keep the mind reliving past events, both recent and ancient, also account for millions oflate or sleepless nights, sometimes for days, weeks or months at a time.
Other illnesses include:
OCD Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is characterized by intrusive thoughts, obsessions and compulsions, that are associated with severe anxiety and insomnia.
PTSD Post Traumatic Stress Disorder sufferers are prone to extreme anxiety, vivid dreams, nightmares and flashbacks. This state of hyper arousal creates chronic insomnia.
Panic attacks and panic disorders are characterized by extreme fear, shaking, palpitations, sweating, deep breathing, accelerated heartbeat and deep anxiety, all, or any of which, will cause prolonged sleep initiation and short sleep longevity.
SAD Seasonal Affective Disorder is a problem brought on by a reduction in daylight hours between OCT/NOV → FEB/MAR and is characterized by increasing depression.
On a personal note, I've been using 'daylight temperature' bulbs in my workspace during winter for 8 years now and no longer have this problem. I'm afraid those awful energy saving light bulbs we're forced to use nowadays are of 'low temperature' design and next to useless when compared to the incandescent bulbs they replaced. What's worse I feel, is that SAD will rise across the country because of it.
Heart Disease - Angina - It's not unusual for angina sufferers to wake at night because of chest pain caused by daytime blood restrictions through narrow coronary arteries, starving the heart of oxygen during times of exertion. This results in insufficient sleep duration and an increased risk of heart attack.
Acid reflux - A gulp of acidic liquid or solid in the throat or upper oesophagus in the middle of the night will wake even the deepest sleeper. Trust me, I know!! This acid is supposed to stay in the stomach, but when lying down, acid can leak back up the oesophagus, usually because of a small hernia in the diaphragm, which burns the oesophagus, leaves a burning sensation in the throat, a bitter taste in the mouth, and a pain around the breastbone often misdiagnosed during the panic as a heart attack.
The burning sensation is persistent after that, because you have an acid burn in your pipes, and it is often very difficult to get to sleep again. Stop eating at lease 4 hours before bedtime, preferably longer, then there's nothing in the stomach to regurgitate.
Fibromyalgia - Muscles aches and pains throughout the body don't just affect a person during the day. Regularly waking up at night due to pain sensations results in long term total sleep reduction and related complications.
Coughing - There can be many causes of coughing at night, from bronchitis and emphysema, to a throat tickle and sinus liquid that drains into the back of the throat and trickles into the trachea instead of triggering the swallow reflex. Persistent coughing can keep you awake at night and also result in chest pain, rib pain, cracked ribs, headaches and a sore, raw throat.
Hot Flashes and Night Sweats - Hormonal disturbance during the menopause can cause many symptoms including insomnia. But this is further complicated by the discomfort caused by hot flashes and night sweats which cause repeated sleep disturbance and subsequent daytime fatigue and sleepiness.
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The mind trick. All of these conditions have, over time, taught the body to react and respond in a certain way, to find a coping strategy. Sleep deprivation may be a product of discomfort and the symptoms you experience are the body's way of minimizing the damage. In the short term this may cause sleep deprivation. The mind knows you must sleep and so eventually, either through sheer exhaustion, or because the mind numbs the pain sensors just long enough for you to release, you fall asleep.
This tricks the mind into thinking its doing a good thing, and insomnia sets in because you get more and more used to not sleeping. Other things, like thinking capacity, energy levels, desire, hope and other body functions are sacrificed instead.
There is a clear relationship between physical and emotional illness and sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation in turn, affects both physical and emotional conditions adversely, by increasing symptoms, complicating the path of illness and interfering with, and slowing, the recovery process.
It is normal for the immune system to take a big hit when it is deprived of energy or focused elsewhere and our defence against infection can be impaired.
The Sleep Soundly Now CD. The idea of what we are trying to do with this CD is to change the body's responses. To give the mind a chance to see that sleep is not the problem, but the solution.
Relaxing the body totally is an effective pain reducing strategy. Relaxed muscles rarely hurt; tense, strained, oxygen starved or damaged muscles hurt. Emotional pain also hurts, but relaxing the mind brings peace and calm.
The moment of sleep. The point at which we eventually drop off to sleep is equivalent to the moment, for example, when the tide moves from ebb to flow, or from flow to ebb, there is a natural pause. When you throw a ball into the air, it reaches the peak of ascent, then stops momentarily, it just hangs in the air, then drops to earth by gravity. Even your heart stops to rest after every beat. It is that moment of pause when there is nothing happening.
The same is true when you are at the moment of sleep, you are awake, and then you are asleep. The moment of transition is the pause between your change of state. If you do not, or cannot, reach that natural pause, you will fail to cross over into sleep and you will become stuck at the threshold or on the path leading up to it.
Reprogramming the mind. By creating the conditions that bring you to that moment of pause, and maintaining it long enough for you to move into sleep, we re-write the progamming of the mind that keeps saying it's somehow 'unsafe to sleep'. Now the mind can feel assured that it's safe to sleep, it's good to sleep, and sleep need not be a threat to me any longer. To give this a try, please visit the order page.
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