Insomnia

4.9 of 5.0 (83 reviews)

Contains
592 words

Category
Science

The above thumbnails are of reduced quality. To view the work in full quality, click download.

Insomnia

Flowers fold their petals; plants fold their leaves as evening falls. With the exception of owls and their nighttime predators, the creatures of land, sea, and air curl up into their bedroom niches in the rocks, trees, and sand. Dawn comes and the unfolding begins. The outside world, which has been barred from the senses of the sleepers, is once again admitted. This rhythm is the most natural thing in the world, intended no doubt to be accomplished effortlessly. Yet, many people find themselves disconnected by the natural flow of sleeping and waking that nature intended us to follow. How many people suffer from insomnia? The estimates vary, ranging from 20 million to 70 million Americans, from one tenth to one third of the population. If we accept the smallest estimate, that's a lot of tossing and turning. These estimates are usually based on the number of serious insomniacs, the definition of which varies considerably. Some doctors define insomniacs as those who cannot sleep at all; other are willing to categorize insomniacs as all those who merely complain about their sleep. The currently accepted definition, to become known as DIMS (Difficulty Initiating or Maintaining Sleep). Several surveys have tried to pin down the exact cause of sleep problems. Of 1,000 households, one third had someone with current problems and in 42 percent someone had suffered from sleep disorders at sometime. Some doctor's polls have been revealing yet somewhat disparate. In one survey, roughly 19 percent of the patients seen by the 3,000 doctors had complaints of some type of insomnia. That figure may actually understate the case, for some say that more people in the United States visit doctors for help in getting to sleep than any other single complaint. It is also estimated that half of those not considered insomniacs have a sleepless night on occasion, and a large but undetermined number do not sleep as well as they should. If you lose sleep chronically, you often awaken unrefreshed and feel tired during the day; it might be a big mistake to attribute your problem only to the situation or the environment. Even the most intelligent find it easier to point the finger of blame at something outside ourselves. Safe explanations are easier to live with. Unfortunately with insomnia, they often cover the real problems. Failure to sleep properly is a strange phenomenon; nature has made it easier to fall asleep than it is to eat. The comparison indicates just how important sleep can be. Someone can go without food much longer than one can last without sleep. Only breathing requires less effort than falling asleep, nature does all the work. It is as if our nervous systems were automatic transmissions. We shift into the proper gear or stage of sleep when they are needed. There is no simple answer as to why sleep does not always occur. Many factors come into play and experts often disagree on which are the most important. Many authorities consider insomnia not a disease, linked to a germ or a faulty organ. They consider it an indication that the body is out of its rhythm. But which rhythm is hard to determine. In most cases, insomnia is usually a problem involving many areas of our lives that overlap so much that any attempt at identifying one single cause is almost impossible. Everything we experience affects our nervous system and therefore our sleep. For this reason, it is difficult to guess the causes of insomnia without detailed knowledge of the individual case. Certain factors have a definite and ...

You are currently seeing 50% of this paper.

You're seeing 592 words of 1184.

Read the full essay

Keywords: insomnia lietuviskai, insomnia meaning, insomniac, insomnia movie, insomnia api, insomnia treatment, insomniac meaning, insomnia test

Similar essays

Constellations

Every culture known to history and anthropology has seen in the heavens distinctive patterns, called constellations, and formed by the stars. are usually comprised of bright stars that appear close to each other. Oriental cultures (the ancient Chinese, for example) formed intricate patterns from some of the faintest stars, creating hundreds of...

191 reviews

Download

Hepatitis b 2

Hepatitis B can be prevented with a highly effective vaccine, but this year ten to thirty million people will become infected with the hepatitis B virus. I feel that because this disease is preventable, only knowledge can help reduce the number of people infected. Hepatitis B is a serious liver disease caused by the hepatitis B virus...

110 reviews

Download

Carbon dioxide poisoning

Carbon Monoxide Poisoning Imagine that it is the first really cold night of the winter season. You begin to feel a chill in the house so you decide it's time to turn on the furnace. So you get up out of your chair and adjust the thermometer. After a while you notice that it has not really warmed up much in the house. So you decide to che...

37 reviews

Download

Climate change (term paper)

Summary: This paper looks at the controversial issue of climatic change. In particular, it develops the question of if and why earth's climate is changing? The roles of man, naturally occurring trends, and earth's cycles are considered, and an outlook for what can be expected in the near and distant future is given. 'The une...

68 reviews

Download

Mutations

A mutation is an alteration in the genetic material of a cell that is transmitted to the cell's offspring. may be spontaneous (the result of accidents in the replication of genetic material) or induced by external factors (e.g., electromagnetic radiation and certain chemicals). take place in the genes, which are found in the long, chain...

197 reviews

Download