Since this is my first post, and my blog is about thoughts and facts late at night, it’s fitting to kick things off with a post about insomnia. Insomnia is a sleep condition that affects 25% of the population each year, including myself. It’s a condition where you have trouble falling or staying asleep and can cause you to have tiredness, low energy, mood swings, a hard time staying focused, or poor performance in school. There are different “levels” of insomnia, however, based on how long it lasts.
Acute insomnia is “brief and often happens because of life circumstances.” These circumstances can be due to a test the next day, bad news, an argument with someone else, or any other stressful things.
Chronic insomnia has to occur 3 nights out of the week and persist for 3 months to be labeled as such. It can be caused by environmental changes, unhealthy sleep habits, unusual times for work, or some types of medicine. This type of insomnia can be helped with some form of treatment, such as behavioral, psychological, medical, or a combination of the three.
What are some things you can do when you have insomnia? I’m no expert, but speaking from personal experience, I find it best to just accept that I’m having difficulty falling asleep and do something productive, whether that’s homework, cleaning my room, or writing a blog post, like what I’m doing right now! The next day might be a bit tiring, but some caffeinated tea and lots of sunshine help me power through. Sometimes I may take melatonin, a drug-free vitamin that helps calm your brain down, the night before a big or exciting day as a preventative measure. One boring book (looking at you Taming of the Shrew) later and I’m fast asleep!
Citations:
“What Is Insomnia?” National Sleep Foundation, www.sleepfoundation.org/insomnia/what-insomnia.
Good job!!! Very interesting!
Insightful and helpful. Thank you sharing your thoughts.
I really like the hand-drawn artwork. I think it effectively conveys a mood while aligning with the content of the writing.
Hi, I was looking at your about page and the art that you created that identifies a few of your favorite things. I noticed that on one of the items you misspelled “My Dad” to instead read “Harry Potter”. Just thought you might want to fix that.
Good information and well written. I will forward to your Aunt Becca and Miss Lucy, who both suffer from insomnia! A family trait? Or too much screen time?
As a fellow insomniac, I appreciate your post. My insomnia is mostly due to poor sleep hygiene. After ten years of going to bed between 11 pm – 2 am – I am in an unhealthy pattern. I just love to be productive late at night but it isn’t the best, I make errors, don’t think as clearly etc. So as my life circumstances change, I am trying to be a grown up and change my habits. I was asleep by 10:45 last night! Winning! And I woke up refreshed, made the kids pancakes and got to work all before 8 AM.
Now, how to break bad habits??
Like!! Really appreciate you sharing this blog post.Really thank you! Keep writing.