Insomnia? Getting a Good Night's Sleep
Learn what goes wrong when you can't sleep — and what you can do about it.
By Charlotte Huff
Tammy Applegate dreams of sleep – when she dreams, that is. Most nights, pain rousts her four or five times. She turns over, repositions the pillow to a position that offers some relief – and waits for slumber to overpower her discomfort.
“Sometimes it takes me so long to get comfortable that I stay awake anywhere from 30 minutes to a couple of hours,” says the Fort Worth, Texas, mother of four, who has mixed connective tissue disease.”
Insomnia – broadly defined as having trouble falling or staying sleep – affects anywhere from 10 to 40 percent of American adults, at least intermittently, according to population studies; it’s estimated that some 10 to 15 percent have long-term sleep problems (lasting more than a month).
If your sleep problems seem intractable, don’t lose hope. Here’s how you can improve your chances of getting a good night’s rest.
What Goes Wrong
Adults need between seven and nine hours of sleep a night. Ideally, that sleep comes in cycles, played out in roughly 90-minute segments throughout the course of a night. It includes rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, in which you dream, and four stages of non-REM sleep. First you enter several stages of non-REM sleep, descending from stages 1 and 2 into stages 3 and 4 – the deeper and more restorative stages. You then resurface through the deeper stages and enter REM sleep. Then another 90-minute cycle starts.
Insomnia comes in two forms. Secondary insomnia is a side effect of another condition, illness or behavior. In addition to arthritis or fibromyalgia, for example, it can be caused by poor sleep hygiene; stress; and a range of medications, including nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), corticosteroids and, for some people, statins (such as Lipitor and Zocor). Primary insomnia, on the other hand, has an unclear cause and may be triggered by a major stressful event or by disruptions in your sleep routine (caused by travel or work). Researchers also are examining whether some people simply are predisposed to insomnia.
Even normal aging takes a toll: As we grow older, we naturally get less restorative sleep and are more likely to wake up in the night – although the amount of sleep we need doesn’t change.
And just worrying about insomnia can make it worse, so that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, says Art Spielman, PhD, a longtime sleep researcher and psychology professor at The City College of The City University of New York. “If you think you are not going to fall asleep, you don’t fall asleep,” he says.
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