Essential things about insomnia and the dangers we are exposing
Probably everyone has had at least once in their life a heavy night’s sleep in which they couldn’t sleep.
A storm or a very late and very consistent dinner are just two examples that can cause sleep problems.
From a medical point of view, insomnia is difficulty falling asleep when it takes more than 45 minutes to fall asleep.
Insomnia is a sleep disorder that manifests itself by reducing the duration and depth. It can be caused by painful abdominal crises, neuralgia, hypertension, neurosis, psychosis, encephalitis, intoxication, diabetes, hyperthyroidism, emotional crisis, etc.
There are two types of insomnia:
– chronic insomnia: lasting several weeks, months or years;
– Transient insomnia: it only lasts several nights and is caused by an unpleasant event that causes dissatisfaction or frustration.
Complete persistent insomnia is characterized by permanent fatigue; the patient can hardly fall asleep, and in the morning he is in a state of depression. It can be avoided by following a reasonable regimen of work and rest and administering pain relievers or sleeping pills.
Sleep is essential to life, just like water and food. That is why, over the past 25 years, scientists have paid special attention to the phenomenon, which has led to the discovery of a lot of interesting things.
We need sleep to grow, restore and work in optimal parameters. Memory and vigilance depend on the quality of sleep, as well as the ability to concentrate and learn, therefore, while we sleep our brain revitalizes, cells regenerate.
Lack of sleep can also cause a weight gain of about 900 grams per week because we are disturbed by the hormonal balance and we will feel the need to eat more frequently.
REM sleep, in which we have dreams, occurs in bursts, about 90 minutes after falling asleep, usually adding up to about 2 hours per night. Some scientists believe that dreams help us fix memories in long-term memory. Others, on the contrary, think that dreams help us eliminate some memories that are above that overlap and that would otherwise block brain activity.
REM sleep may play an important role in brain development. Premature babies sleep 75% of the REM phase, this means 10% more than in the case of full-term babies.
The massive Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska in 1989, the Challenger space shuttle disaster or the Cernobil nuclear accident, all attributed to human error in which lack of sleep played a fundamental role. In addition, fatigue caused by lack of sleep causes 1 in 6 fatal traffic accidents.