Magazines, Internet web pages and TV health shows often present facts about insomnia and the best way to put an end to sleeping disorders, but individual cases are characterized by particular elements that are also an important part of the general picture. Here are some of the most important facts about insomnia that may help you make a change in your life. First and foremost, in case you’ve been prescribed some sleeping pills: don’t take them for more than three weeks because they cause addiction, while also worsening the insomnia. Such drugs are only a temporary solution for the problem: they don’t eliminate the cause of your insomnia, their mere function is to induce sleep by means of chemical modifications.

Further facts about insomnia include the discussion of the body chemicals responsible for good or bad sleep. First of all we should mention the human growth hormone that is secreted late in the night ensuring high quality sleep; owing to the decrease in the levels of this chemical specific to old age, insomnia cases are more frequent with elderly people. Chronic insomnia has also been associated with low levels of melatonin, a hormone secreted by the pineal gland. In what the stress hormones are concerned, there are all sorts of contradictory facts about insomnia as being influenced or not by their excessive secretion.

Sleep is absolutely necessary for the recovery of the organs and the proper functioning of the body; unfortunately, medical facts about insomnia prove that sleeping disorders prevent the proper function of the immune system. In other words, when you don’t get enough sleep, exhaustion, fatigue and the inability to fight diseases appears; therefore, people who suffer from chronic insomnia are more exposed to infections than those who have a normal sleep-wake cycle. The existent facts about insomnia prove that there is a connection between the high stress levels and the dysfunctions of the immune system triggered by sleeping disorders; solving one problem would definitely imply the improvement of the other.

There are certain foods and beverages that may cause insomnia: it goes without saying that caffeine is the first one to blame for sleepless nights. Facts about insomnia indicate that many people who develop sleeping disorders over-use products that contain caffeine: tea, coffee, coke or energy drinks. Furthermore, the combination of such beverages with alcohol is even more detrimental to the system, inducing a state of hyper-agitation and anxiety that is incompatible with a tranquil sleep disposition. Consequently, it is highly important to actually identify the behavioral patterns that trigger insomnia and thus eliminate them.