9 Causes Why You Cannot Sleep

Insomnia: Sleep Disorder > 9 Causes Why You Cannot Sleep

1. Coffee

Caffeine blocks the sleep-inducing action of your brain chemical named adenosine.

It can also reduce the amount of hormone melatonin that make you sleep.

Not only will caffeine make you stay awake but also you will sleep restlessly.

In a study in Israeli, participants given coffee, had half the amount of melatonin in their systems when compared with those who were given decaf.

They also took double the time to fall asleep and sleep an average of 79 minutes less.

2. Light

Before going to bed, doing your work on a computer or laptop, playing with your electronic device iPad or tablet and watching your favorite drama or movie spending two hours in front of the tube may help you wind down, but these activities send signals to your body system to stay awake as it is still daylight.

Your sleep hormones kick in at about 9 or 10pm, but if your bedroom did not get dark, your body holds off on melatonin production, making it harder for you to fall asleep.

3. Biology

You are being trained to believe that you need an uninterrupted seven to eight hours of sleep but a research by historian A. Roger Ekirch of Virginia Tech found that people from the past in many cultures traditionally had two distinct sleep periods per night, separated by an hour or so of wakefulness.

Therefore, it is normal to sleep in split shifts.

Today, you would toss and turn, worried that you will never go to get back to sleep.

4. Alcohol

While drinking alcoholic beverages will knock you off, alcohol actually disrupts sleep patterns.

You will wake up more often, you will get more deep sleep at the start of the night and restless sleep in the second half of the night.

Thus ending up feeling unrested the next day.

5. Worry

Your emotion plays an important part in how well you sleep, it is like an invisible arm that shake you out of your sleep.

People with sleep problems also have anxiety or depression.

6. Age

As you get older, you are more likely to have long periods of wakefulness, often in the third quarter of the night or early morning.

When you are in your 20s and 30s, you will start getting less and less of the deeper stages of sleep.

That is why even healthy older people have sleep disruptions, when you are not as deeply asleep, anything is likely to wake you.

Age may have a smaller impact on sleep than you might have thought.

In a 2010 British study, older people are found to have slept only about 20 minutes less a night than middle-aged men and women, who in turn slept only 23 minutes less than young adults.

In her research Jeanne Duffy, Ph.D, Harvard sleep researcher, found that healthy older people can miss sleep or even stay up all night and not feeling exhausted the following day as someone younger might.

7. Pain Or Discomfort

Back pain and gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) are two major causes of sleep disruption.

GERD is a condition in which the ring of muscle fibers (or sphincter) in the esophagus cannot prevent the back flow of stomach contents into the throat.

8. Obstruction Sleep Apnea (OSA)

When you have this condition, your breathing stops periodically, sometimes for a minute and restart breathing again.

OSA is caused by a blockage of the airway, usually when the soft tissue in the back of your throat collapses.

It may surprise you to know that OSA is the cause of your daytime sleepiness because you have been waking up all night but are not aware of its happening.

The OSA major symptom is a loud snore, ask your partner, whether you snore during sleep.

9. Restless Legs Syndrome (RLS)

If you awaken from your sleep because you have the irresistible urged to move your legs to stop them from tingling, you may have this nerve disorder.

It also leads to difficulty in fall back asleep and frequent waking.

RLS often runs in families and it tends to be worsened with stress.

If you have RLS, you would also have an additional condition called periodic limb movements in sleep, your legs jerk every 20 to 40 seconds in clusters throughout the night.

Posted by: Mo Salle

Next Article: 9 Causes Why You Cannot Sleep: The Solutions

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