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Hello Edgar and welcome to the forum.
Most people don’t routinely take naps during the day because they get sufficient sleep at night and don’t feel sleepy during the day. People with untreated chronic insomnia are rarely excessively sleepiness — instead, they tend to have a problem with fatigue.
Healthy sleepers nap to reduce sleepiness — not for sleep itself. For example, if I am driving for four hours and feel very sleepy I will pull over and have a half-hour nap to reduce this sleepiness. I am not napping because I want to sleep at that moment in time.
If your ultimate goal is to get more sleep at night, it’s important to bear in mind that time spent asleep during the day will reduce sleep drive and can lead to less sleep at night.
When you implement sleep restriction, the goal is to increase sleepiness (and sleep drive) so that when you go to bed, you fall asleep faster, and you spend more time in bed asleep rather than awake.
You mentioned that you think napping is meant to be a part of everyone’s day. I don’t know any healthy sleepers who regularly nap. This would, of course, be different if I lived somewhere like Spain where siestas are part of the culture — but I don’t think people in ‘siesta culture’ nations nap because of any pressure to do so. They nap because they want to, and it is something they are accustomed to.
If you aren’t accustomed to naps, there is no need to feel you should be taking them — and they can actually be unhelpful if you struggle to sleep at night.
I hope this helps!
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Are you currently following a regular sleep window? If so, when does it start and when does it end? Roughly how many hours of sleep are you getting at night? If you provide some more information, I will try to offer some suggestions.
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Thanks for your contribution, jazzcat.
Sleepiness and adenosine levels are linked — higher levels of adenosine mean higher levels of sleepiness. The only way to create sleepiness is through wakefulness and daytime activity. One reason why CBT-I is so effective is that it helps strengthen sleep drive through bedtime restriction and stimulus control. So, you go to bed when sleep drive (and adenosine levels) are high enough for sleep.
The study you linked to did not conclude that people with insomnia have 30% less GABA. It only involved 16 individuals, the study findings were preliminary, and they still need to be replicated. It is also worth mentioning that the research was funded by a drug company (perhaps no surprise since many sleep medications target the GABA system).
If GABA deficiency was the cause of insomnia, then insomnia would be cured with GABA supplements. However, GABA deficiency is not the cause of chronic insomnia and so insomnia does not get cured when people take GABA supplements (or sleeping pills that target the GABA system).
(Another study published in 2012 — four years after the study you shared — found that people with insomnia had higher GABA levels!)
There are only three causes of chronic insomnia disorder. These are:
1. Homeostatic disruption (ie, reduced sleep drive)
2. Circadian disruption (ie an inappropriate or inconsistent sleep schedule)
3. High levels of arousal (physiological arousal, cognitive arousal, and/or conditioned arousal)
There can be an unlimited number of initial triggers of sleep problems, but every case of chronic insomnia disorder is down to one or more of the above three causes. These are the issues that need to be addressed if someone with chronic insomnia wants to improve their sleep for the long-term!
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
I just came across a great discussion between Daniel Erichsen, a sleep physician based just down the road from me, and someone with insomnia who went back and forth between CBT-I and ACT. I think it adds some really good context and additional value to this forum topic!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjVIzRUnf1I
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
“Researchers took blood samples from 11 pairs of identical twins with different sleep patterns…”
So, the study did not involve individuals with chronic insomnia. Therefore, that study does not support the idea that chronic insomnia suppresses the immune system.
I’m going to withdraw from this discussion now since it’s not constructive for me to evaluate all the sleep-related studies out there in order to demonstrate why they do not apply to chronic insomnia!
Insomnia is awful. It makes you feel lousy. It can make the day harder. It can make you feel frustrated, worried, anxious, and alone. However, there is no evidence that chronic insomnia causes any disease or health problem. Such concerns are natural and understandable (after all, we are bombarded with inaccurate sleep messages on a near-daily basis by the media) — but they are not accurate and they are certainly not helpful.
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
CBT-I techniques are effective at improving sleep even among people with high levels of anxiety. They just need to be implemented correctly and consistently — and the techniques are not easy.
Good luck, Barb!
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Hello again, Barb. I received your sleep log but unfortunately, it’s not terribly helpful because you left a lot of entries blank or used large ranges of times. So, we can’t really use your current sleep diary to average your nightly sleep duration or to determine when you usually get into bed and get out of bed.
I did notice that the sleep log you submitted was quite complex and asked a lot of questions! You may find it easier to keep up with a simpler sleep diary such as this one:
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/insomnia-coach/Short+Sleep+Diary.pdf
Generally speaking, the amount of time you allot for sleep should be very close to the amount of time you actually spend asleep. So, after a week, you calculate your average nightly sleep duration. Then, add half an hour to this time to get your sleep window (this should be at least five-and-a-half hours long).
You can then use the sleep window to determine your earliest possible bedtime and your latest possible out of bed time. It’s important to then stick to these times — but bear in mind that the start of the sleep window is the earliest possible time you should go to bed. If your sleep window begins and you don’t feel sleepy, don’t go to bed until you do feel sleepy. However, no matter how well or how poorly you sleep during the night, it’s important to get out of bed by the end of your sleep window every day.
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Hello again, Barb. Are you currently keeping any type of sleep diary or sleep log?
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Welcome to the forum, Barb — and I am sorry to hear about your struggles with sleep. Chronic insomnia normally has an identifiable trigger, but once that trigger is no longer relevant, sometimes sleep issues can continue to be a problem. This is usually because we start to worry about sleep and compensate for lost sleep.
The strategies we then implement in an attempt to improve sleep can often backfire and make sleep more difficult. Some examples include going to bed earlier than normal, spending more time in bed, taking morning lie-ins, napping during the day, calling in sick to work, trying to conserve energy during the day, etc, etc, etc!
CBT-I techniques such as sleep restriction and stimulus control only work when implemented strictly and consistently. Did your doctor suggest a sleep window for you to follow?
We’ve all got your back and we are all here to support you, Barb. You are not alone.
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
This is a great question — and the answer is, we still don’t know for sure what causes these hypnic jerks.
Sleep starts/hypnic jerks are thought to affect more than half of the population — so, in themselves, they are not something to be concerned about. Sleep studies in people with sleep starts do not show any abnormality (although the movements can sometimes cause awakenings). They are often associated with the transition from wakefulness to the first stage of sleep (N1 sleep).
As you suggested, building sleep drive may help reduce their frequency. Sometimes, they can be associated with falling asleep in a certain position. So, if you normally sleep on your back when they occur, try shifting your sleeping position and see if that helps.
Finally, sometimes these jerks/twitches can occur when the body isn’t adequately supported or when we try to sleep in an unusual/uncomfortable environment. So there is another avenue to explore/experiment with.
I hope this helps!
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Sorry to hear that you are struggling with sleep, Marie. Can you tell us a bit more? What is a typical night like? When do you go to bed, get out of bed, and roughly how many hours of sleep do you get on an average night?
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Great to hear that you aren’t experiencing all-nighters anymore — that’s a great achievement and evidence that you are making progress!
So your current sleep window is 11.40 PM to 6 AM (am I right)? You mentioned that you regularly find it hard to stay awake until your sleep window begins. Is this still the case on nights when you find it hard to fall asleep? In other words, do you feel really sleepy before the sleep window begins but when you get into bed you suddenly feel awake and alert?
A couple more questions for you:
1. Are you combining ‘sleep restriction’ with stimulus control?
2. Are you more of an evening person (night owl) or are you more of a morning person (a lark)?
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that good sleepers have bad nights every now and again. So, aiming for flawless sleep is not really an achievable goal!
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Hello again, @frozensun. I am not asking you to prove anything to me. I know how awful insomnia can be and I am sorry that you are going through all these issues with sleep. All I am trying to do is reassure you that there is no evidence chronic insomnia causes any of the health issues you are concerned about. I only mentioned Wikipedia because that is the source you gave me.
@Davy — Can you post a link to the study that found chronic insomnia causes a reduction in white blood cells? I’d love to see it.Hi @Daf! You’re right, one person started the course reporting six-and-a-half hours of sleep (but they spent three hours awake at night) and another reported five hours. Someone else managed only three-and-a-half hours. Remember that sleep durations are averages — they are not what someone managed on every single night.
When it comes to reporting no sleep, there’s a difficulty. That’s because nobody gets NO sleep. It’s impossible! We may get a few nights of no sleep, but we all get some sleep. So, how do you quantify NIL sleep? I prefer to average nightly sleep duration over at least a week to get a better idea of someone’s average nightly sleep duration. If we only focus and record nights of NIL sleep, we easily reach the wrong conclusion and collect skewed data.
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Hello again, Frozensun. The link to Wikipedia lists associations between some health issues and “sleep deprivation”. When you look at the studies in question, many of them take healthy sleepers then deliberately deprive them of sleep and draw conclusions from there.
Others will find associations between chronic insomnia and health issues — but not one study has found that chronic insomnia causes any health problem.
If you read the Wikipedia article carefully you will see lots of statements such as “It has been suggested” or “researchers interpreted this result as” or “may be linked”.
I could easily conduct a study on a link between people living in a house with ashtrays and premature death, then conclude that ashtrays lead to premature death. Of course, this is ludicrous — the association is there, but it’s far more likely that the homeowners smoke and this is leading to premature death.
When considering research, it’s essential to bear in mind that an association is not a cause.
Finally, please bear in mind that this is an insomnia support forum — so almost all of the posts you read will be from people struggling with insomnia. People who sleep well rarely contribute. You can read a number of CBT-I success stories here:
https://insomniacoach.com/success/
Suicide is not a solution. If you are having suicidal thoughts, please speak to someone immediately. I am not sure what resources are available to you, but I did find this and I hope it may help:
https://www.centarsrce.org/emotivna_podrska.php
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
