Poor sleep is a problem that every inhabitant of the planet has encountered. Miscellaneous violations Happens at any age, but in children it is night terrors, walking while asleep, urinary incontinence; in adults – chronic insomnia, nightmares or excessive sleepiness. Sleep problems often occur in older people. If unpleasant phenomenon poisons your life and often repeats itself, you should consult a doctor. He will find out the cause and prescribe medicine.
Poor sleep manifests itself in different ways, but the effect of a bad night is always the same: you lack vital energy, cannot concentrate on work, feel weak and tired.
Insomnia, shallow or short sleep, nightmares, frequent awakenings, excessive sleepiness, rhythm disturbances, chronic lack of sleep– phenomena that poison our lives and worsen our well-being, making us nervous and absent-minded.
There are many reasons for insomnia and poor sleep. To improve your condition, you need to figure out why you suffer from the phenomenon in question. You may have gone to bed during the day or taken alcohol at night; went to bed angry or agitated, under strong emotions; drank strong tea or coffee for dinner; engaged in late evening sports or heavy physical work.
In any case, you need to streamline your daily routine and be sure to spend several hours in the fresh air.
If you systematically do not get enough sleep, feel exhausted and tired every morning, and there is a general weakening of the body, then go to an appointment with a neurologist. These symptoms may indicate nervous disorders and psychological problems.
The specialist will prescribe effective therapy, and, if necessary, sedatives and sleeping pills. Psychotherapy and various types of relaxation will also help cope with sleep disorders.
To avoid suffering from poor sleep, you should: simple recommendations, which will have a beneficial effect on overall health:
Poor sleep is a nuisance with consequences; you need to know what to do in such cases using folk remedies. Because the problem can only be solved late at night with “grandmother’s recipes.” The following are several recommendations that will make “Morpheus’s embrace” strong and your sleep healthy and deep.
Sleep is the body’s natural, basic need for rest. Up to a third of a person’s entire life passes in this state; the health and capabilities of each individual depend on its quality and duration. In the modern era, not everyone can boast of really good sleep - stress, problems, bad habits, big city noises, mental disorders and other reasons disrupt regular, much-needed circadian rhythms, which leads to a significant deterioration in a person’s quality of life. What to do? You will find the answer to the question below.
Doctors know about hundreds of different causes of sleep disorders. Some of them can act as an independent factor, while others have a negative impact on the quality of night rest only in the aggregate.
All such reasons are conventionally divided into two large categories– external and internal. The former are often physiological, while the latter are predominantly associated with diseases.
Non-medical causes of poor sleep include:
Medical causes of poor sleep. There is quite large number diseases, syndromes and pathogenic conditions of the body, against the background of which various sleep disturbances occur - both the process of falling asleep and the night's rest itself. Let's name the most famous and significant among them:
If poor sleep at night has a regular basis and problems with night rest continue for more than two weeks, then you need to pay close attention to this fact. The best option is full examination from specialist doctors who will help make a diagnosis and find the true cause of insomnia.
If you are sure that poor sleep is not due to medical reasons, but is caused by a physiological manifestation or external factors, then you can resort to a number of general recommendations and try to restore it yourself.
If the recommendations described below do not give the desired effect, it is imperative to undergo a medical examination.
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People call healthy sleep sound, peaceful, sweet. After such a dream, a person will wake up energetic, in a good mood, ready to move mountains.
Sound sleep speaks of healthy body And in the right way life. Shallow sleep, and even interrupted by frequent waking up, signals like a flashing light that not everything is in order in the body and help is needed. Since you are reading this article, it means that you are worried about the question “why can’t I fall asleep and often wake up at night?” Let's figure out what a bad dream tells us. What to do to restore quick sleep without frequent waking up.
Poor sleep may be caused by various factors
Sleep disturbance is manifested by difficulty falling asleep and frequent waking up or, conversely, drowsiness. Types of sleep disorders:
The most common sleep disorder is insomnia. In everyday life it is simply called insomnia. All types of sleep disorders require treatment after examination using polysomnography.
With insomnia, the question often arises: “why do I often wake up at night?” The most common cause of insomnia is a nocturnal lifestyle, in which a person works or has fun at night and then sleeps all day. The change from night to day is unnatural for humans. The biological rhythms of owls and predatory animals are adapted to hunting at night and are determined by the natural laws of survival and continuation of life. The functions of their organs are tuned to a nocturnal lifestyle - acute night vision. Human biological rhythms are genetically tuned to active life during the day and rest at night. The human brain produces the sleep hormone melatonin at night. With insomnia, the hormone decreases to a critical level, and thus insomnia becomes chronic.
The main hormone of the pineal gland is melatonin.
Insomnia can also be caused by short-term or permanent conditions or diseases.
Most common factors that lead to insomnia:
Elderly people quite often complain to the doctor, “I wake up at night, prescribe a remedy for good sleep.” In old age, disruption of night rest is natural. Herbal medicines help older people get rid of light sleep. When treating sensitive sleep in older people, taking a vasodilator (for example, vinpocetine) is also recommended.
If a person says, “I wake up often,” then he should think about what causes sensitive night rest. The causes of frequent waking up and poor sleep are the following somatic diseases:
Sleep apnea disease
In case of cardiopulmonary failure, the reason for a sensitive night's rest is oxygen starvation– hypoxia, which forces you to take an elevated position of the body to facilitate breathing.
The problem of “waking up often at night” occurs with restless legs syndrome. Very often, varicose veins appear vascular insufficiency legs When blood circulation in the legs is impaired, the need to move reflexively arises to restore it. lower limbs. It is this unconscious desire that causes restless legs syndrome. If during the day a person moves his legs without noticing it, then at night involuntary movements cause a person to wake up frequently. During measures taken for treating legs, will help get rid of insomnia.
One of the serious reasons for a sensitive night's rest is obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSA) in people who snore. It is caused by dangerous stoppages of breathing at night due to diseases of the nasopharynx. A person wakes up from suffocation due to the cessation or restriction of air flow through the nasopharynx. The causes and treatment of sleep disturbances due to snoring are dealt with by somnologists and neurologists. If you are concerned about the problem of “I often wake up at night,” you should contact these specialists. Treating snoring will relieve you of insomnia.
Very popular ready-made products for insomnia in drops, tablets, capsules and solutions. The following medications will help get rid of insomnia or light sleep:
Ready-made products for good sleep can be purchased at any pharmacy without a prescription.
Sedative herbs
For mild cases of sleep disturbances, herbal remedies are very effective. They can be prepared at home in the form of a decoction or infusion. The following popular herbs are used to treat insomnia:
The pharmacy has ready-made herbal mixtures for the treatment of insomnia. To prepare the infusion, you should brew 2 tbsp. l. dry collection with a glass of boiling water, put on water bath for 15–30 minutes, then leave for 45 minutes. The product should be taken strained 3 times a day. Take the last dose of infusion 40 minutes earlier before going to bed. Infusions help deepen shallow and sensitive sleep.
In the treatment of insomnia, drugs of the benzodiazepine group are used. We give preference to the following medications:
Sleeping pills
The disadvantage of this group of funds is that they are addictive. If the medication is discontinued after prolonged use, insomnia may develop.
As a result, we considered the most common reasons sleep disorders in people. We learned how to get rid of bad unproductive sleep with the help of herbs and ready-made pharmaceutical drugs. Remember chronic insomnia needs to be treated, and for this you should contact a neurologist.
Adequate sleep without waking up is an indicator of good human health. Why people wake up at night for no apparent reason, often at the same time, is of interest to sleep specialists - somnologists and people suffering from insomnia. How to return a healthy night's rest to adults, children and the elderly will become clearer with a deeper study of the topic of sleep.
The quality of night's rest is one of the main factors full life person. Insomnia, no matter what the cause, affects people's physical and emotional health. It is impossible to cure this disease with medication, because it becomes addictive to the medications. A person taking sleeping pills becomes dependent on the drug. The absence of medicine frightens a person and makes him nervous.
The main reasons for poor sleep in men and women are:
During pregnancy, women sometimes wake up due to hormonal changes in the body. This natural process, although it brings inconvenience to the expectant mother, is a temporary phenomenon. Don't worry about this. General somatic diseases such as osteochondrosis, diabetes mellitus, pathologies of the lungs, gastrointestinal tract and other organs can lead to disruption of night rest due to painful symptoms.
Psychosomatic diseases: rheumatoid arthritis, bronchial asthma, neurodermatitis, etc. in their nature have both physical and mental aspects. Stressful, panicky states, and psycho-emotional experiences significantly excite the patient’s nervous system while awake, which leads to sleep disturbances. These reasons prevent adults and children from getting a good night's rest.
Some medications prescribed by a doctor to treat a particular disease have sleep disturbances as side effects. For example, beta blockers are a common type of medicine used to treat medical conditions. cardiovascular system, have such side effect. When using medications, you must carefully study the instructions for use. If after using the medicine the patient begins to sleep poorly, he should contact his doctor with a request to change the drug.
People don't always think of nighttime urination as a problem, but it does exist. At night, the process of urine production slows down; a healthy person can sleep for 8 hours straight. Nocturia causes you to wake up frequently due to a burning desire to urinate. As the body ages, the quality of sleep is disrupted: it becomes superficial and intermittent. Old people may wake up several times a night due to physical pain that accompanies them chronic diseases.
Alcohol drunk in the evening can quickly plunge a person into deep sleep. Some men and women use this remedy to relax and fall asleep quickly. The body will have to process alcohol at night, when most of the body's organs are not active. This creates an additional load on the liver, which causes internal unconscious anxiety in a person, a state of anxiety. As a result, he can wake up several times a night.
Sleep apnea (stopped breathing reflexes) is another cause of poor sleep. This disease affects about 5% of the world's population. Congenital pathologies, overweight influence the narrowing of the upper respiratory tract at night, which leads to temporary cessation of breathing. The unconscious instinct of self-preservation forces you to wake up when there is a critical amount of oxygen in the blood. Sleep apnea sufferers often snore, which impairs the quality of their night's rest.
Patients with depression sleep poorly. Constant stress does not give the body the desired relaxation. It is difficult for a person to sleep, he often wakes up. Due to lack of sleep, anxiety increases and the disease worsens. With restless legs syndrome, the patient cannot sleep due to an irresistible desire to move his legs. This neurological disease causes discomfort: itching, burning, tingling of the legs. They are so strong that the signals from the nervous system force you to wake up.
Night heartburn, coughing attacks, pain when swallowing - for these reasons, most people wake up during the night. With gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), these symptoms torment the patient, forcing them to wake up from acid reflux (reflux of acidic gastric juice into the esophagus). Such emissions can occur several times during the night. The patient wakes up every time.
Worried moms are worried that... infants often wake up at night and cry. The crying of infants in itself should not alarm parents. The daytime disturbances that the baby receives while awake can cause awakening. This emotional aspect is not pathological, because new impressions naturally excite his fragile nervous system.
Night feeding of a newborn baby is considered normal. If a mother breastfeeds her baby by the hour, waking him up for night feedings is natural. Gradually, mothers can increase the time between feedings, then, instead of milk, teach the child to drink water at night. With age, the habit of waking up at night will leave the baby if the parents are consistent and patient.
Babies often experience abdominal cramps because their metabolism child's body has not returned to normal yet. This may cause nighttime crying. A tummy massage, a warm diaper that warms the abdominal area, and special teas will help mothers relieve the child’s pain. Colic can bother babies up to three months of age. When a baby is teething, he becomes very restless and capricious, often waking up. This natural process brings suffering to the child. Your temperature may rise. Mothers should definitely seek help from their pediatrician at this time.
Babies have very sensitive skin. A full wet diaper worries the baby and he wakes up. A child does not sleep well when he has a cold, as he is bothered by a cough, snot, and fever. Like adults, children sleep poorly due to an uncomfortable bed, inappropriate clothing, and uncomfortable air temperature in the nursery. They are frightened by loud sounds and irritated by strong smells. If optimal conditions are created for your baby, he will stop waking up at night.
It happens that older children wake up in the middle of the night and call for their mother. This is fine. Perhaps the child had a nightmare. Children often wake up if they are afraid. It is very important to put your baby to sleep correctly. When he is put to bed by loving parents, the environment is friendly and the child is healthy, he will have no reason to wake up at night and cry.
Melatonin is a sleep hormone produced by the pineal gland of the brain. It begins to be actively produced after 21 hours. If melatonin is produced normally, a person does not know what insomnia is. Closer to morning pineal gland Dopamine receptors are activated, which block the release of melatonin. If the production of these hormones fails, a person sleeps poorly. A polysomnographic examination can identify the causes of a patient’s poor sleep, and a sleep specialist will give necessary recommendations.
Somnologists help understand why people often wake up at night. In their opinion, there are a number of reasons that affect the quality of night rest. Having analyzed them, excluding negative factors, you can stop waking up at night. The temperature of the room where adults sleep should be 17-20°C. In the children's bedroom - 18-21°C. The body of a sleeping person, according to physiological processes, must cool down a little in order to enter the sleep phase. If your child often wakes up drenched in sweat, you need to change his blanket and pajamas to lighter ones.
The reasons for frequent awakening at night may be functional disorders of the body (parasomnias). It will not be possible to cope with them without the help of a doctor. Parasomnias include:
Why people wake up at the same time at night can be understood by understanding anatomy human body and cycles of its functioning. If you have poor sleep, do not neglect the help of a doctor; he will select the necessary medication or cognitive behavioral treatment. The reasons for waking up at certain hours of the night may be as follows:
You can understand why you can’t sleep at night if you carefully examine your sleeping area. Often interruptions in sleep are caused by an uncomfortable bed or the unusual environment of the room in which you have to spend the night. Stale air, pungent odors, coffee drunk before bed, emotional discomfort - these are far from full list reasons leading to disruption of a good night's rest.
From 3.00 to 5.00 the lungs are active. During these hours, people suffering from lung diseases wake up. The cough intensifies because the lungs cleanse themselves at this time. If you wake up during this period, you should pay more attention to your lung health - quit smoking, for example. People susceptible to depression often wake up before 5 am.
Therapists will help determine why a person wakes up at night, pouring out cold sweat for no reason, by diagnosing diseases with this symptom. Cold sweat, along with other signs, is a clinical picture of the following diseases:
If nighttime urination is a problem, you should limit your fluid intake after 7 p.m. Tea and coffee are natural diuretics, so you should avoid them in the evening. Infectious diseases genitourinary system, nocturia, kidney disease, diabetes mellitus can provoke the desire to urinate at night. It is worth treating the root cause, not the effect: reviewing the medications prescribed by the doctor against the disease. Replace those that are diuretics and have sleep disturbances as contraindications.
Watching your lifestyle will help you stop waking up at night. If you drank alcohol in the evening and waking up at night is associated with this fact, you should give up alcohol in the evening. Napping in front of the TV, like sleeping during the day, can cause you to wake up at night. Sports and evening walks will help you fall asleep quickly.
A comfortable bed, a high-quality mattress, and natural bed linen are the key to a healthy night’s rest, which contributes to a person’s excellent well-being during the day. A ventilated room, the absence of noise, bright lighting, emotional experiences and other irritating factors will help you not to wake up at night. Those who sleep poorly should stick to simple rules that will help restore normal night rest for 7-8 hours without waking up:
Published: March 6, 2013 Created: March 6, 2013
Sleep disorders are quite widespread phenomena. From 8 to 15% of the world's adult population have frequent or constant complaints of poor or insufficient sleep, from 9 to 11% of adults use sedatives sleeping pills, and among older people this percentage is much higher. Sleep disorders can develop at any age. Some of them are most typical for certain age groups, for example, bedwetting, night terrors and somnambulism in children and adolescents, as well as insomnia or pathological sleepiness in middle-aged and older people. A neurologist, chief physician, Ph.D. will tell us about sleep disorders. Slynko Anna Alekseevna.
– Anna Alekseevna, tell our readers why our body needs such an important component of life as sleep?
– Sleep is one of the most important components of human life. During sleep, wakefulness is inhibited with the switching off of consciousness and the active work of the unconscious, the activity of certain (somnogenic) systems of the brain and the whole organism as a whole. Processing and integration occurs during sleep mental activity human, active restoration of the structure and function of the body. And this part of our life is no less important than waking, and perhaps the most important, during which self-healing, healing, and mental “reboot” occur. It’s not for nothing that they say: “The morning is wiser than the evening.” Because during sleep, active processing of information occurs. Not only the conscious and unconscious take part in decision-making, but also the knowledge and experience of our ancestors, which are encrypted in our genetic material. Some believe that spending one third of your life in a dream is too much, and therefore they rush to live, cutting down on sleep time, grossly disrupting the sleep cycle (sleep during the day, stay awake at night, go to bed late). Such disrespect for sleep takes a toll on the body. It is known that this reduces resistance to infections, the immune system is impaired, and the risk of cardiovascular diseases increases, mental disorders, adaptation to stress decreases, etc. It has been noted that centenarians sleep a lot, that is, their body rewards a large amount of time spent in sleep with long, healthy wakefulness. However, it is known that the need for sleep decreases with age, and older people sleep less. But isn't this a prognostic sign of health?
– Anna Alekseevna, is there a difference in the way we sleep?
- Counts normal sleep from 6 to 9 hours a day for an adult. But everyone's need for sleep is different. It is important to go to bed so that you can wake up on your own in the morning without coercion or discomfort and not feel drowsy during the day. It is very important to fall asleep at the same time. In this regard, time zone shifts, the transition to summer-winter time, and working at night are unfavorable for health. It is very important to fall asleep before 23.00. It has been observed that sleep between 11:00 pm and 1:00 am is very important for the body. At this time, the greatest regenerative activity of the body occurs. This is consistent with knowledge traditional medicine. During this period, the energetic “power” of the heart is at a minimum, so it is best to sleep at this time. But not only the total duration of sleep matters, the structure of sleep is important, when the correct duration and sequence of sleep stages occurs. It is known that the structure of sleep changes in various diseases. Medical influence on sleep phases changes the course of some diseases (for example, depression). Sleep is a heterogeneous state; during sleep, a natural alternation of phases occurs. The slow-wave sleep phase makes up 75-80% of sleep (divided into napping, light sleep, medium-depth sleep, deep sleep), during this phase of sleep recovery processes and optimization of control occur internal organs. There is also a phase of REM sleep or rapid eye movement phase. In the REM sleep phase, the electroencephalographic picture resembles wakefulness, although the person is motionless and the muscles are maximally relaxed, during this phase he dreams. Total duration all phases, that is, the cycle, are about 90 minutes. During the entire sleep period, 4-6 cycles occur.
Insomnia or insomnia– a subjective symptom characterizing dissatisfaction with sleep, lack of vigor after sleep. If this dissatisfaction with sleep occurs within one week - it is episodic insomnia, up to 3 weeks - short-term, more than 3 weeks - chronic insomnia. In laboratory mice without sleep, a change in consciousness occurs after three days, a coma and death after a week. A person also cannot live without sleep, just like without food, drink, air. Therefore, people who say that they do not sleep at all are mistaken. They sleep, but their sleep is intermittent, brief, incomplete, and there is no feeling of sleep and vigor after it.
– What types of sleep disorders exist?
– More than 54 various diseases nervous system, psyche and internal diseases are manifested by sleep disturbances.
Sleep disorders can be divided into:
difficulty falling asleep, maintaining sleep, excessive sleepiness, a feeling of lack of rest after sleep.
difficulty falling asleep (inability to fall asleep for 2 or more hours)
shortened sleep, frequent awakenings, shallow sleep, early awakening.
lack of feeling of rest after sleep, lack of physical vigor, feeling of “being overwhelmed”, asthenia.
motor and mental phenomena that accompany sleep. These are shudders, changes in body position, which are physiological. AND pathological parasomnias– excessive, restless movements during sleep, sleep-talking, sleepwalking. There may also be frightening dreams, nightmares, disturbances in the rhythm and depth of breathing, night snoring, apnea (long pause in the breathing cycle).
pathological daytime sleepiness. Most often, daytime sleepiness and inappropriate falling asleep during the day are caused by obstructive apnea. That is, during sleep the airways become blocked and the patient wakes up from lack of air. This occurs especially often in obese people, with big belly sleeping on their backs, when the lungs are supported by organs located below the diaphragm. In this situation, it is advisable to reduce weight, sleep on your side, on a higher pillow. Daytime falling asleep is extremely dangerous for people involved in driving and other dangerous species activities.
– How to assess the quality of sleep?
– Doctor who studies sleep - somnologist, analyzes sleep using polysomnography. This is a diagnostic method that includes simultaneous registration of electroencephalography, ECG, electromyography, audio monitoring of snoring, analysis of body movements, legs, breathing movements, body temperature, blood pressure, pulse, etc. Polysomnography data allows you to assess the duration of sleep, the number of awakenings, the distribution of sleep stages, breathing and heart rhythm disturbances, abnormal movements and establish the nature of parasomnias. However, not every patient with insomnia is able to study their sleep so carefully. Therefore, a therapist or a neurologist or a psychiatrist often helps to figure this out.
– Anna Alekseevna, tell us about the reasons for sleep disturbances?
- Anna Alekseevna, give me a few useful tips on treating sleep disorders for our readers!
– What are the steps to treat psychophysiological insomnia.
– Thank you for the interesting conversation, Anna Alekseevna! I hope every reader takes something useful from your story!
The interview with Anna Alekseevna Slynko (neurologist, chief physician, candidate of medical sciences) was conducted by Margarita Kucheruk
