You stay up late at night rolling from side to side. You look for a comfortable position or you start counting up to a hundred…and yet, falling asleep is impossible. Good sleep quality is vital for your physical and mental health. Sadly, millions of people around the world struggle to get that much-needed. Known as insomnia, this sleep disruption can have negative consequences on your mental and physical health.
What is insomnia?
In essence, insomnia is the difficulty to fall asleep or stay asleep even if you have the chance to do so. If you suffer from insomnia, you might feel dissatisfied with your sleep or the amount of sleep you are getting. Meanwhile, you experience several side effects that negatively impact your overall well-being. Such effects include low energy, persistent fatigue, difficulty to remain focused, mood swings, and decreased performance at work or school. If this is your case, know that you aren’t alone. Insomnia affects millions of people worldwide.
Insomnia is not the same for everyone. It includes a wide range of sleeping disorders such as lack of sleep quality or lack of sleep quantity. It is commonly separated into three types:
“Sleep is that golden chain that ties health and our bodies together” Thomas Dekker
What causes insomnia?
Insomnia is caused by several reasons that vary according to each person. For years, experts have pointed out unhealthy sleeping habits, specific substances, or biological factors. Recent research believes insomnia might be caused by the brain’s inability to stop being awake. To understand what is preventing you from falling asleep, consider the following possibilities.
Anxiety
Do you often feel worried or nervous? Perhaps the challenges of daily life fog your brain so much that they regularly interfere with sleep patterns. Feeling anxious all the time can lead to insomnia. You might feel excessively worried about future events, stuck in past situations, or tense when thinking about facing responsibilities. It is no wonder that, when you are quiet and inactive at night, stressful thoughts take the central stage, keeping you awake.
Depression
Psychiatric conditions such as depression can cause insomnia. When you are in a deep struggle with your mind, falling asleep can be extremely challenging. Insomnia itself can lead to changes in mood and shifts in hormones. Usually, sleep problems are a symptom of depression. That’s why the risk of severe insomnia is much higher in patients with major depressive disorders.
Lifestyle
You might be living a lifestyle of unhealthy sleeping habits without even knowing it. It can be that you take naps during the afternoons to compensate for a day of hard work, for example. Although these short naps can help some people, they also make it hard for you to fall asleep later. Or perhaps you cover irregular shifts, which in turn confuses your internal body clock hours. This results in difficulties sleeping whenever you need it most.
Eating habits
If you find yourself struggling to fall asleep, your unhealthy eating habits are to blame. Consuming alcohol, nicotine, too much caffeine, or heavy meals before bedtime increases your risk of suffering from insomnia.
Insomnia in numbers
According to the Centers for Disease and Prevention, 35% of adults don’t get enough sleep (7 hours per day). What’s more, 40% of people aged 40 to 59 reported that they are getting less than the recommended amount of sleep. 30% of the adult U.S. population suffers from insomnia and 10% from chronic insomnia, making it the most common sleep disorder.
Living with this kind of disorder has many damaging consequences. 75 to 90% of insomnia sufferers have an increased risk of conditions such as hypoxemia and GSD (glycogen storage disease). Yet, an estimated 10 million people in the United States remain undiagnosed.
Insomnia and sleep deprivation are not only harmful to yourself but can endanger the lives of those around you. According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, over 100,000 deaths can be attributed to medical errors caused by sleep deprivation. Similarly, sleepiness leads to almost 20% of all car crash accidents and injuries.
Beautiful sounds: the best method to fall asleep naturally
When looking for the best method to improve sleep, you might come across many unfit options. Pills, sedatives, and beverages might do more harm than good, or offer no solution at all. What many people ignore is that the answer has been there for centuries and it is music.
For as long as history can account sound has been a key promoter of physical and emotional health, deeply rooted in ancient cultures and civilizations. Thousands of years ago, the Egyptians used vowel sound chants in healing as they believed vowels were sacred. When native American shamans were summoned to heal an ill member of their tribes, they would fast to receive a song in a dream or vision instructing them on how to carry out the treatment of their patients.
Developed by over a thousand experts, Synctuition uses a combination of binaural beats and 3D sounds at just the right frequencies to immediately bring the listener to a pleasant meditative state. You will be transported to a relaxing, lucid dream in your own imagination while listening to one of Synctuition’s audios. Ultimately, you will be able to quieten down stressful thoughts and unwind before bedtime. And the best thing? It is a truly natural, non-invasive way to say boost deep, restorative sleep.
Ready for a better rest? Start today
Insomnia affects millions of people all around the world and can have terrible consequences for our physical and mental health. Good sleeping habits are the key to a healthy and longer life. If you want to enjoy the many benefits of healing sleep, the best thing you can do is try out sound meditation and begin your journey of personal recovery.