A risk factor is simply something that increased your likelihood of developing a disease or condition. Insomnia, like other sleep disorders, has a number of different potential causes and factors that can make you at risk for developing insomnia.
Sleep deprivation is the chronic condition of not receiving adequate sleep. Adequate sleep will differ from person to person, and change as we age. Most of us suffer from sleep deprivation because we either have trouble staying asleep, or getting to sleep. Does that sound familiar?
Before talking about causes of insomnia, you need to understand that there are two types of insomnia:
Someone who is a shift worker doesn't work typical hours and days. This means either working non-typical hours (8ish-5ish), working rotation work (changing shifts), or working many days on followed by many days off. Especially in Alaska, summer time means a large number of seasonal shift work jobs.
Sleeping pills are known as sedative hypnotics. They relax the mind and body in order to help prompt sleep. They are prescribed to people who have trouble getting asleep, and/or staying asleep, such as I the case of insomniacs.
The sleep deprivation cycle is the cycle that many of us struggle with chronically – being sleep deprived for days followed by sleep binging, which leads to staying up later and being sleep deprived again. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle. Does it sound familiar? Are you always wasting your weekend catching up on sleep?
Alaskan summers can make having a sleep schedule feel impossible. If you’re reading this, you are likely one of those people.
Summers and Winters in Alaska can both be hard on getting enough sleep. The extreme lighting conditions don’t provide the transition from light to dark and dark to light in the morning/evening that prompts us to get tired and wake up. Because of this, setting a good sleep routine can be extremely hard.
A sleep study, also called a polysomnogram (PSG), is a non-invasive study conducted at a sleep center (usually) or at your home (uncommonly), where sleep specialists monitor your sleeping behavior. Your sleep is monitored via PSG equipment in order to evaluate how you are sleeping, what your brain is doing while you sleep and when it's doing it, and, where applicable, any sleeping disorders you may be dealing with.
Sleep studies provides critical diagnostic information, and are a standard when you or your doctor suspects that a sleep disorder is present in your life.
Having a bedtime routine is probably your surest bet to getting consistent and sufficient sleep every day. Good bedtime routine habits may replace sleep medicine supplementation in some cases, and helps prevent you from the nasty cycle of low sleep followed by sleep binging. Sleep deprivation is insidious: