Causes And Consequences Of Insomnia
As a common modern malaise, insomnia is increasingly becoming a threat to health. However, Western culture's first references to insomnia can date back to the ancient Greeks. The earliest mention of insomnia in the pre-Hippocratic Epidaurian tablets is one of the 70 cases. In the year 1997, the American Sleep Disorder Association (ASDA) defined insomnia as the condition of being unable to sleep over a period of time. It can be classified as transient, acute, or chronic. To be more specific, transient insomnia refers to sleeplessness within a week while acute insomnia will last for a month but less than three months. The worse form of insomnia is chronic insomnia, in which a person will suffer from sleep disorder for more than a month or even longer. This essay explains the reasons and investigates the possible impacts of three types of insomnias. Transient insomnia is the most well-known form of insomnia. As Staff (2016) mentions, the transient insomnia is mainly caused by an unhealthy lifestyle, such as caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol. All caffeinated drinks are stimulants. For some sensitive people, even drinking afternoon coffee will keep them awake until late at night.
Nicotine in tobacco products is a similar thing that can interfere with sleep. Likewise, alcohol may help you fall asleep quickly, but it prevents deeper sleep stages and often causes a midnight awakening. Ramadan (2009) emphasizes that transient insomnia might also refer to the lack of sufficient length or quality of sleep. In this case, people stay awake late at night spontaneously to solve the time-limited emergency along with dizzy and unattractive study or work and even headaches and fainting during the next day. Roth (2005) points out that under transient insomnia, the brain cannot get rest, which will inevitably affect the brain's ability to think and deal with things. Thus, work efficiencies will be greatly reduced, affecting people's work status. Fortunately, such insomnia generally improves with the disappearance of the event or the prolongation of time. Based on the research of Morin (2012), acute insomnia is usually caused by severe or persistent stress like major physical illness or surgery, death of friends and relatives, social or interpersonal problems. In the age of informatization, people have to deal with a lot of information daily. As a consequence, excessive use of the brain causes the human body's nerves to remain in a high-tension state, and the more substances the brain cells secrete. As Morin (2012) pointed out, once the nervous system is overloaded, it will normally be repaired and suppressed, so it is susceptible to nerves, indicating that insomnia has a significant correlation with stress. According to Maslach (2001), acute insomnia can lead to a patient's irritability and burnout under this sleep deprivation.
Despite the fact that acute insomnia is just a short-term sleep disorder, it still has a profound impact on learning or work. It is quite easy to let patients lose enthusiasm for work, emotional irritability, and neglect surroundings. When patients have an unclear view of the future, their attitude towards work is negative and objects of service or contact become increasingly impatient and unfriendly, such as teachers who are tired of teaching. They will punish the students corporally or they would not control themselves to say something meaningful. Under these circumstances, patients fail to grasp the meaning and value of their work; they are often untimely and may plan to change jobs or even change careers. Insomnia is usually considered chronic if a person has trouble falling asleep or staying asleep at least three nights per week for one month or longer. Benca (2012) informs that some medicines and stimulants may cause chronic insomnia such as acid reflux, hyperthyroidism, and fibromyalgia, along with lifestyle patterns such as rotating shift work, physical inactivity, and frequent travel across multiple time zones, resulting in jet lag. Under a long-term sleep disorder, forgetfulness is the most obvious effect because brain function activity is affected by long-term insomnia. In this regard, Ramadan (2009) has determined that brain events called 'sharp wave ripples' were the cause of solid memory. The ripples transfer the learned information from the hippocampus to the new cortex of the brain, where long-term memory is stored.
Sharp ripples occur mainly during the deepest stages of sleep patients who suffer chronic insomnia cannot maintain the deepest stage of sleep. At the same time, Ramadan (2009) also believes that patients with long-term insomnia cannot concentrate and are more likely to forget. On the other hand, chronic insomnia may also result in a significant societal burden and economic cost. According to Rosekind (2010), the annual direct cost of insomnia has been estimated in the billions of US dollars. Therefore, the article emphasizes that chronic insomnia is likely to cause economic risks. These billions of losses will push people into an infinite loop, which means the increasing costs have led to a reduction in personal income and created greater economic pressure. Individuals choose to work overtime in order to relieve stress, but this will further shorten sleep time or cause more serious insomnia. To sum up, insomnia is a common and expensive public health problem. It is not measured by total sleep time, but by whether you get enough length or quality of sleep. Therefore, whether it is spontaneously or passively unable to obtain sufficient length or quality of sleep will be regarded as insomnia. All these three insomnias are related to the effects of mental, occupational and physical functions. It is clear that more information needs to be provided to further explain the differential quantity categories describing insomnia more specifically on how it occurs in many ways and the consequences should be considered carefully.
