Are we all turning into Walking Zombies? Insomnia. We all know what it is and my bet is we all think that we are alone in having it. Well, guess what? You are not alone! In fact, approximately a third of the UK suffer from Insomnia or some sort of sleep disorder, such as sleep apnea or restless leg syndrome. I myself tend to go through various stages of good sleep and bad sleep, I guess everyone does really? But lately, I have found that no matter how early I drag my over-tired body into bed, or how late I have to get up the next day – it just makes no difference! The insomnia seemed to reach a rather dramatic peak yesterday when I actually fainted and my poor boyfriend had to carry me in to bed. This was at 8pm. Could I actually sleep? No. I found myself constantly waking up at hourly intervals. When the alarm went off at 7am this morning, I literally felt like I would have felt more rested if I had just stayed up all night drinking buckets of coffee. And it would seem, according to my, oh so reliable Facebook account, that I am indeed not the only one suffering at the moment. Everywhere I look, friends have updated statuses in the middle of night “really fed up of not being able to sleep now” or throughout the day: “so tired, what’s going on?” So, utilising my journalistic skills, I decided to do a bit of research in to this little niggling matter. You know what I found? Apparently changes in the weather cause changes in air pressure – I guess most of us will remember that from primary school Science class! But what I didn’t know is that when the air pressure changes it affects our breathing, therefore making it harder for our bodies to relax and consequently, resulting in extremely disrupted sleep. While this may seem like a fair enough account of why this happens, it turns out that, though this can result in insomnia, it is more likely to affect sufferers of sleep apnea as their already stilted breathing worsens. So, any other fair struggling to sleep?
accounts of why we are
Unfortunately not. It seems that the only causes that the medical profession can come up with are the usual: chronic pain, stress, depression, anxiety, too much caffeine (yet a little can actually help you relax – how does that work?) medications or underlying physical conditions.
While this may all be fair enough – if these are the only causes then they are. End of. Nothing we can do about that! But the thing that annoys me is that countless health and medical websites say: “A common cause of insomnia is anxiety or worrying.” Well please would someone explain to me how we can stop worrying then? Because, as far as I can see, if we worry about something then it affects our sleep; but once you haven’t slept for a few days, you inevitably start to worry that you may not be able to sleep when you tuck yourself into bed with a warm cup of milk! A vicious circle if I’ve ever seen one. I wish that I could tell you how to finally get some sleep, but it would seem that the only way to break this vicious circle is to have a spa day (that I cannot afford)! All these websites urge us to try and resolve the issue the good old-fashioned way before trudging down to Boots to get our hands on the holy “sleeping pill” grail, but yet, I honestly cannot see another solution. Any ideas? I am Kerry-Louise Barnaby Guest Writer