If you had trouble falling asleep last night, that explains why you may wake up feeling weak and lethargic. Problems at work, at home, dwindling cash reserves and the like, are legitimate and common worries. You couldn't get your mind off of it. When you realize the lateness of the hour, you know you aren't going to get enough sleep, and that adds to the worry! You lie there with your eyes shut, hearing the clock ticking away your precious sleeping time. You've got to be up in time to get to work! You don't have much of a choice. You can't jeopardize your job! Having sleeping problems can impact your entire well being.
It would be nice if we could just sleep in. Such tight schedules were not always a daily part of life. In some primitive societies, you could sleep in. Insomnia wasn't one of their sleeping problems - they were just going to sleep earlier or later than usual. They were simply going to sleep when they got sleepy. Insomnia is not a disorder, but a burden imposed by the way modern man orders his life.
Not so with sleep apnea. Apnea is a physiological condition. An overly relaxed throat and esophagus closes off the normal air passage, choking the person awake. Primitive or modern man could have the same problem. Happening about 100 times a night, such sleep will not refresh us as it should. Apnea is to be considered one among the 90 forms of sleeping disorders.
Restless leg syndrome (RLS) results in yet another of our sleeping problems. Victims of RLS are unable to sleep because of sharp, enduring pains in their arms and legs. Surely, primitive man also had such discomforts, but he did not have to sit at a desk, stand at a counter, sit in a crane, or operate heavy machinery eight hours a day as modern people do. Perhaps for some of us, our legs were meant, genetically speaking, for walking. Again, our way of life may be responsible for one of our sleeping problems.
Then there's PLMD, Periodic Limb Movement Disorder, that wakes us periodically throughout the night. All of a sudden, our body or appendages suddenly jerk, waking us. This too can happen multiple times in a night, again waking us. Is this too a result of the way we live our lives? Depression can also keep us from sleeping and is counted among the various forms of sleeping problems. Ancient man must have been depressed occasionally and lost sleep because of it. It might be considered a cause of insomnia, but not a sleeping disorder. The same is true with insomnia caused by taking certain medications. The problem isn't that we cannot sleep because of some physiological condition, but because we are creating a physiological condition because we're taking medications! Primitive man didn't have insomnia as a result of taking heart medicines. Much of what we call sleeping disorders are the result of our way of life.
Some suggest that if we changed the way we live and the way we approach sleep, many of these sleeping disorders would disappear. Modern medicine handles sleeping disorders, those that have to do with not being able to sleep rather than falling asleep when we should not, by first treating the patient with sleeping pills, and then by teaching the patient 'sleep hygiene', which involves the best practices that enable us to sleep. This therapy is called cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). Having considered that most sleeping problems have to do with our modern life, perhaps CBT will solve most of them. In short, modern man has to learn how to sleep again. If you experience sleeping problems regularly, it's time to consult the doc!
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