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 DEFINITION The insomnia is for definition an involuntary decrease of the time dedicated to sleeping. The subject sleeps less than he would want and of what it should. The insomnia can affect to different phases of the sleep:
Drowsiness: normally the insomnia affects to this phase because of situations or phenomena of anxiety, anxiety or environmental influences (like light, noise...) and especially it happens in children. Dormición: the subject falls asleep but he wakes up constantly throughout the night. It is possible to have to to situations of anxiety, cerebral organic disorders of all kinds or at the age (the same way as it is advanced in age, the sleep diminishes and deteriorates). To wake up: typical precocious awakening in endogenous depressions. The subject wakes up much early and does not turn to sleep but he does not also feel with forces of getting up of the bed.
CAUSES To meet on the real cause of the insomnia that we could endure is essential:
Anxiety Environmental influences Age Cerebral organic disorders Psychological disorders ...
Most of the insomnias is secondary (consequence of another disorder) but also a type of primary insomnia exists. This type of primary insomnia is not very frequent and little of him is known. It is studied from the point of view encefalográfico but it does not seem to present big alterations at this level, by what there is not known the reason or cause of this type of insomnia. It might owe to a bad adequacy, problems of personality, or an obsession with regard to the sleep.
Another type of insomnias is the due ones to somatic reasons: pain, fever, itch, tos…malestar corporal. These are habitual in cases of alterations of the gland thyroid gland (hipertiroidismo), administration of certain medicines (bronchodilators anti-inflammatory in high doses, hormonal products especially if they contain testosterone...)
Also it can stem from psychiatric disorders, all those ones that produce anxiety, agitation, excitement... as they are: the mania, the schizophrenia, certain depressions, demencias... Finally, we have to bear in mind the existence of studies that demonstrate the distorted perception of the time when we cannot sleep: the minutes seem hours. It means that we can think that we have been the whole night awake when in fact two hours have been alone.
TREATMENT
- Reeducation of the sleep: It consists of improving the hygiene of the sleep, controlling the stimuli that provoke insomnia and regulating the schedules:
- Not to go to the bed up to feeling sleepy.
- Not to watch TV, to read or to eat in the bed.
- Minimal separation of one hour between the last ingestion and to go to bed.
- To avoid the copious meals.
- To eliminate the alcohol since, in spite of inducing the sleep, it produces you will wake up precocious and it reduces the entire sleep time.
- To reduce the consumption of caffeine and tobacco.
- To practise regular physical exercise, but before never going to bed.
- To improve the environmental conditions, to reduce the noises and to avoid the extreme temperatures.
- Restriction of the sleep: To shorten the bed time to the time of real sleep. To be moving forward little by little the bedtime.
- Relaxation therapies.
- To establish an hourly routine to fix the biological clock.
- Pharmacological treatment: The medicines are used to treat the symptoms of the insomnia or the illnesses, physical or psychological, that they cause it. In the first case they are administered hypnotic before going to bed and in secondly sedative, antidepressants or neuroleptics. The patient has not to automedicarse in any case, since these substances can worsen his pathology, generate resistances or create addiction.
The treatment must be established by the medical specialist, who will value the need to administer them by virtue of the origin and the gravity of the disorder.
As for the relaxation skills, these are effective in the reduction of the physiological hyperactivity of the insomniacs. Also, the psychotherapy can help after which the patient recognizes his psychological conflicts or the traumatic experiences.
TO SEE ALSO
WHAT DOCTOR CAN TREAT ME?
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DEFINITION YOU 
