Insomnia: Treating the Condition - Essay Example

Intro:
Most people suffer from this from time to time, although many of the cases are extreme ones in which the person needs to seek out medications to help them be able to sleep. Insomnia, which can occur when a person is having problems sleeping, or cannot find themselves with the ability to sleep, can affect almost anybody.

Insomnia can happen to almost anybody and can happen for various reasons. Sometimes a person could be suffering from high amounts of stress or anxiety, maybe they drank too much pop and caffeine are keeping them awake, or any number of various things that could affect how a person sleeps and why they cannot sleep when they want and try to. All of these possible reasons could cause a person to be unable to fall asleep when they want to, or keep them from being able to stay at rest enough to eventually fall asleep.
Insomnia however is a treatable condition; however, one must be careful when trying to treat the condition.

Body:
Insomnia is a sleep disorder that keeps a person from being able to fall asleep or to sleep when they want to. It can be caused by a myriad of other problems within a person’s life, such as “fear, stress, anxiety, medications, herbs, caffeine, depression or sometimes for no apparent reason”(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insomnia#Treatment_for_insomnia).

Sometimes, even an overactive mind or pain can lead a person to suffer at the hands of insomnia. The best way to cure and help treat a person’s insomnia is to first find the cause, and then try to solve that cause as best as one can.

Insomnia can be divided into three different cases, all depending on how severe the actual type of insomnia the person is experiencing is. These three cases of insomnia are transient insomnia, acute insomnia, and chronic insomnia.

The first type of insomnia, also known as transient insomnia, is the shortest and least server of the other insomnia forms. This type of insomnia usually “lasts from one night to a few weeks but it seems longer” ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insomnia#Types_of_insomnia). A person may experience this type of insomnia due in part to anxiety, or possibly jet lag. If several cases of transient insomnia happen repeatedly, it can become known as intermittent, due to its pattern of popping up again every so often.

The second type of insomnia is acute insomnia. If transient insomnia develops into a longer period and ends up lasting somewhere between three and six weeks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insomnia#Types_of_insomnia), then it becomes known as acute insomnia.

The last and most severe type of insomnia is chronic insomnia. It is often regarded as the most serious of all the insomnia types, and it can cause a person to lose their sleep for a period of a year. It is the worst type of insomnia, and can also last the longest, with the longest recurring symptoms.

It is also important to establish between insomnia and simply having poor quality of sleep. Poor sleep can happen when people are “not reaching stage 4 or delta sleep which has restorative properties. There are, however, people who are unable to achieve stage 4 sleep due to brain damage who still lead perfectly normal lives”(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insomnia#Types_of_insomnia). This difference is important, just because a person is not getting good quality sleeps doesn’t mean they always have insomnia, they could just be suffering from a lack of sleep quality.

Treatment, however, can be used to help insomnia. Many people will use sleeping pills, or other sleeping aids to help them get the sleep they are not able to get on their own. This is one method of attaining the sleep you can’t get while suffering from insomnia. Other remedies, such as warm milk and certain oils can be used to help a person find rest when they are unable to do so.

Insomnia is a sleep condition that affects “60 million Americans each year”( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insomnia#Types_of_insomnia) but can be treated with the proper medicines and remedies.

Conclusion:
Insomnia is a sleep condition that can affect anybody, at almost any age. Many different people have stress or anxiety in their lives that can cut into the amount of sleep they are getting, and cause them to develop insomnia.