Insomnia Description

Insomnia: from the Latin insomnis, meaning sleepless
Sleep is absolutely essential for repair and rejuvenation, and those with chronic insomnia must find a solution in order to maintain quality of life. Most people don't know that chronic insomnia predisposes people to early death. Therefore, from a perspective of extending life, it is absolutely essential that good sleep patterns be restored.

Insomnia is a frequent symptom indicative of overt or underlying depression. In this case, it is essential to treat the depression in order to produce healthier sleep patterns. Improving sleep often alleviates depression and vice versa.

Insomnia can be described as either difficulty initiating or maintaining sleep or both. It affects millions of people and is often difficult to treat. Those who suffer from insomnia feel as though they have not had sufficient sleep when they awaken. Over the long-term it may cause fatigue, irritability, and decreased concentration just to name a few symptoms. Elderly people may require less sleep than younger adults, on average 6-8 hours per day. This is a normal, age-related change and should not be considered to be a sleep disorder in a healthy individual.

Sleep is not a static condition, but actually a fluid condition with changes occurring throughout the sleep period. These stages demonstrate different brain wave patterns. In particular, the period of so-called rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is when we dream. There are about five periods of REM during the night. The deepest periods of sleep, stages 3 and 4, occur early in the night. It is the deeper phases of sleep that decrease in duration as we age.

Implications of Sleep Deprivation in Degenerative DiseaSE

In studies on insomnia and sleep deprivation, researchers have concluded that lack of sleep raises levels of two adrenal hormones (cortisol and ACTH) associated with the proinflammatory cytokine, interleukin-6 (IL-6). Inflammatory cytokines have been linked to numerous degenerative diseases, such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoporosis, and neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease. In a carefully controlled study, sleep deprivation caused an average increase of 40-60% of IL-6 in both men and women. Another inflammatory cytokine called tumor necrosis factor (TNF) was also elevated 20-30% in sleep-deprived men (Vgontzas et al. 1999; 2001). At the annual meeting of the Endocrine Society held in San Francisco June 19-22, 2002, lead researcher Dr. A.N. Vgontzas reviewed his findings, noting that missing only two or three hours of sleep will cause a person to function poorly the next day. Dr. Vgontzas concluded that getting a full night's rest of eight hours sleep is a necessity, due to the link to serious physical illnesses associated with chronic inflammation (see the Chronic Inflammation protocol for suggestions on lowering levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines).