7 Causes of Your Insomnia and How to Overcome It

Some­times, keep­ing your eyes open and stay­ing awake can be very dif­fi­cult. You can only dream of get­ting to bed faster, because even cof­fee does not invig­o­rate you. And now, after a hard day, you are final­ly under the cov­ers, but sleep still does not come.

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But before you get a sleep­ing pill, you should find out what could be the rea­son that you are tired dur­ing the day, but do not sleep at night. And only then it will be pos­si­ble to take mea­sures to improve sleep.

What is circadian rhythm

The cir­ca­di­an rhythm is like an inter­nal clock for every­thing our body does dur­ing the 24 hours. This sys­tem uses light, dark­ness, and our bio­log­i­cal clock to reg­u­late body tem­per­a­ture, hor­mones (includ­ing mela­tonin), metab­o­lism, and, of course, sleep.

The body’s mas­ter clock is called the suprachi­as­mat­ic nucle­us (SCN). Locat­ed in the brain, SCN con­trols the pro­duc­tion of mela­tonin, a hor­mone that helps reg­u­late sleep. Dur­ing the day, when it is light out­side, mela­tonin lev­els remain low. But towards the evening it is already pro­duced more, it reach­es its max­i­mum between 2 and 4 o’clock in the morn­ing, and then decreas­es again.

Our body is at its best ready to fall asleep about 2 hours after mela­tonin lev­els begin to rise.

Each per­son has their own cir­ca­di­an rhythm, which is to some extent genet­ic. There­fore, it works dif­fer­ent­ly for every­one. How­ev­er, if you’re tired but can’t sleep, your cir­ca­di­an rhythm may be out of whack. This may be a sign of delayed sleep phase syn­drome. It hap­pens when you fall asleep 2 or more hours lat­er than what is con­sid­ered “nor­mal” (22:00 to 00:00), mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to wake up in the morn­ing to study or work.

This prob­lem affects young peo­ple more often (about 7–16%), but it also occurs in about 10% of peo­ple with chron­ic insom­nia.

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Why am I constantly tired during the day?

If you’re tired but can’t fall asleep after sun­set, it could be a sign of delayed sleep phase dis­or­der. But this is not accu­rate, because a lot of dif­fer­ent things can inter­fere with good sleep.

Below, we’ve com­piled some of the rea­sons why peo­ple are most like­ly to expe­ri­ence fatigue, espe­cial­ly dur­ing the day.

1. Anxiety

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, sleep dis­tur­bance is a diag­nos­tic symp­tom of some anx­i­ety dis­or­ders, which, accord­ing to ear­li­er stud­ies, are observed in 24–36% of peo­ple with insom­nia. Anx­i­ety also leads to increased arousal and alert­ness, which can fur­ther delay falling asleep. The solu­tion is to wor­ry less.

2. Depression

Based on the pre­vi­ous point, it is not dif­fi­cult to guess that any psy­cho­log­i­cal prob­lems affect sleep. And depres­sion is no excep­tion. Near­ly 90 per­cent of peo­ple diag­nosed with depres­sion often com­plain about the qual­i­ty of their sleep. The link between sleep prob­lems and depres­sion is com­plex. Appar­ent­ly, the cir­ca­di­an rhythms get knocked out, and there­fore it becomes more dif­fi­cult to fall asleep.

3. Naps

Drowsi­ness, in and of itself, is not a bad thing. Plus, it has a num­ber of health ben­e­fits. How­ev­er, the wrong nap strat­e­gy can keep you awake as well. Long naps or naps after din­ner can cause you to stay asleep longer at night, sleep poor­ly and wake up more often. And in the morn­ing, you won’t feel very well again. There­fore, it is rec­om­mend­ed to go to bed at the same time every day so that the body gets used to falling asleep on time. Dur­ing the day, you can also take a nap, but no more than 20–30 min­utes. This will be more than enough.

4. Caffeine

You say you can’t wake up until you drink a strong cap­puc­ci­no? Have you ever won­dered what caf­feine most often spoils the qual­i­ty of your sleep? And all kinds of ener­gy is no excep­tion. It is a known fact that the half-life of caf­feine lasts about 5 hours. And even if you drink just a cou­ple of serv­ings of cof­fee 16 hours before bed­time, it can affect your well-being. It is best to com­plete­ly stop drink­ing cof­fee drinks 4–6 hours before bed­time.

5. Screen time

If you read this arti­cle before going to bed, then it is bet­ter to remove the phone from your hands imme­di­ate­ly after the end. Our TVs, lap­tops, smart­phones, tablets emit blue light, which inter­feres with the pro­duc­tion of mela­tonin in the evening, and there­fore sleepi­ness is reduced. It is rec­om­mend­ed not to use gad­gets 2 hours before bed­time. But try to go with­out your phone for at least an hour before you plan to fall asleep.

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6. Diet

All of us girls want to be slim and beau­ti­ful. But in pur­suit of low weight, we remove the com­po­nents nec­es­sary for the nor­mal func­tion­ing of the body. There­fore, nutri­tion­ists and sci­en­tists have come to the con­clu­sion that a change in diet can improve sleep. Past reviews have shown that high-fat diets are asso­ci­at­ed with less REM sleep, more deep sleep, and increased post-sleep arousal. High car­bo­hy­drate intake is asso­ci­at­ed with more REM sleep, less deep sleep, and faster sleep. But this niche is still at the research stage, so there is no strict­ly pre­scribed diet that would suit every­one. But sci­ence does not stand still, does it?

7. Other sleep disorders

Delayed sleep phase syn­drome isn’t the only dis­or­der that keeps you from going to bed ear­li­er and leaves you feel­ing tired dur­ing the day. Sleep apnea and rest­less leg syn­drome can also ruin your “hiber­na­tion”. In sleep apnea, breath­ing repeat­ed­ly stops or becomes very shal­low, and then returns to nor­mal. With rest­less leg syn­drome, your legs feel uncom­fort­able, mak­ing you want to move them.

Both dis­eases can dis­rupt night­time sleep, result­ing in day­time sleepi­ness. But it is bet­ter to con­sult with experts about this.

Why it’s bad to be tired

In addi­tion to the obvi­ous fact that it will be dif­fi­cult for you to work if you do not get enough sleep, there are a num­ber of oth­er dis­eases that can occur if the body does not feel rest­ed:

• Alzheimer’s dis­ease;
• high blood pres­sure;
• dia­betes;
• stroke;
• obe­si­ty;
• heart attack.

How can I sleep?

For you, we have com­piled a small set of basic rules that can help you sleep and feel much bet­ter.

• Keep your bed­room dark and cool, between 15–19°C.
• Leave your phone and oth­er devices in anoth­er room.
• If noise inter­feres with your sleep, try using earplugs.
• In no case do not go in for sports before going to bed, because then the heart­beat and pulse quick­en, and you feel cheer­ful.
• Instead, choose some­thing sooth­ing, such as read­ing or med­i­ta­tion.
• As we have already said, you should not drink cof­fee a few hours before bed­time.

It is bet­ter to try your best to let go of all the thoughts and anx­i­eties that have accu­mu­lat­ed dur­ing the day, and com­plete­ly relax. We strong­ly advise against tak­ing all sorts of seda­tives (unless they are pre­scribed by a doc­tor), because they can have side effects on your body.

I hope this arti­cle was use­ful and now your sleep will become bet­ter, and fatigue will com­plete­ly dis­ap­pear.

Author: Oksana Leshchenko