What keeps you up at night?

There are many things that you think about when you’re about to go to bed: How much work do you have left to complete the next day? What are you going to eat for breakfast? lunch? dinner? Or even stressing out about how much sleep you’ll be losing if you don’t sleep now? The most common sleep disorder is called insomnia.

So what is Insomnia exactly? and is there a way to avoid this from happening to you? The actual definition of insomnia is habitual sleeplessness; inability to sleep. For many people insomnia is temporary as the stress that keeps them awake is quickly resolved. However, that isn’t the case when you’re worried about losing sleep — and therefore begins the continuous loop. In the beginning, yes it is possible to get through your day with just the few hours of sleep that you get, but sooner or later, exhaustion will catch up with you.

So what is the science behind this? Some long-term conditions such as respiratory disorders, gastrointestinal problems and many others have the ability to overpower fatigue, and as your sleepless nights pile up, slowly your bedroom itself, the very bed you sleep on will start to carry associations of restless nights filled with anxiety. When it’s finally time to sleep, you end up being stressed instead, and this stress hijacks your stress response system. This causes cortisol and adrenocorticotropic hormones to course through your bloodstream, which increases your heart rate and blood pressure and finally brings your body into hyperarousal. This condition forces the brain to hunt for potential threats in your body, which makes it impossible to ignore any slight discomfort or any noise around you.

When you do actually fall asleep, however, the quality of your sleep is compromised as PET studies show that adrenaline kicks in and prevents your sleep, which also speeds up your metabolism. The thing is, you need your metabolism to be slow, as our brain’s primary source of energy is cerebral glucose and if your metabolism is fast, you won’t be conserving the cerebral glucose for the hours that you are awake. This makes your bodies work overtime, which burns up all the supply of the brain’s energy-giving glucose. Finally, this makes you wake up in a state of exhaustion, stress, confusion and lets you go through the entire process all the way from the beginning.

A way to tackle insomnia is through good sleep practices: making your bedroom dark and comfortably cool, only using your bed for sleeping, and if you’re restless, leave your room and focus on other relaxing activities like meditating, reading or even beginning to write your own journal! You want to also regulate your metabolism by setting consistent resting and waking times to help orient your body’s biological clock.

It is important to note that this isn’t the only reason why you might not get any sleep at night. Approximately 8% of people who feel that they’re suffering from insomnia are actually suffering from a less common genetic problem called delayed sleep phase disorder which is also known as DSPD. These people have their own delayed schedule to sleep, which causes the inability to sleep at a typical bedtime — not due to increased stress. So get checked! Make sure you know what is actually your reason.

Our body is a complex thing and we need to maintain a balance of our sleep and activities for our mental wellbeing. So it is definitely worth putting in some time and effort to sustain a stable routine in your life.

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