What are the causes of insomnia? Most people think it’s stress, anxiety, or depression. In some cases, stress can cause insomnia. But insomnia is generally not caused by one factor.
Insomnia itself is not a disorder. Insomnia is a symptom of some other root problem (or problems).
By understanding the numerous factors that cause insomnia, you can take a more integrative approach to getting better sleep at night.
Insomnia cause 1: Light after sundown
Before the invention of the light bulb, people rarely if ever experienced insomnia.
The exposure to light at night (or light after sundown) inhibits the production of melatonin, which is a key hormone is getting us to sleep and helping us stay asleep.
It turns out that the body takes a couple hours of darkness to produce significant amounts of melatonin. Turning the lights off right immediately before bedtime does not give the body enough time to sedate your body in a bath of melatonin.
Insomnia cause 2: Circadian rhythm is out of sync
Your body has an internal clock (called your circadian rhythm). The rotation of the earth can also be considered a clock, defined by the rising and setting of the sun.
For the 2.5 million years of human existence, the body’s internal clock stayed in sync with the clock of the earth. The body’s internal clock always knew what time it was because humans lived outside. The sun would indicate when it was time to be alert and awake. The darkness would indicate when it was time to rest and be asleep.
In our modern world, we trick our internal clocks to become out of sync with nature’s clock. By use of artificial light, we are tricking our clocks into thinking that it’s daytime when it’s really nighttime.
We are also waking up later and going to bed later. Our clocks become confused as we always play “catch up” — we sleep in on the weekend, but wake up early on Monday morning.
This circadian rhythm “dance” we force our bodies through is perhaps the single most prominent cause of insomnia.
When your internal clock is out of sync, you may be going to bed at a time when the body still thinks its daytime. In this case, it may see frustrating that you “lack the skill” to fall asleep, when really it’s nothing more than an out of sync circadian rhythm.
Insomnia cause 3: Caffeine
It amazes me how many insomniacs drink caffeine. Caffeine inhibits the activity of a neurotransmitter called adenosine. Adenosine is one of your brain’s natural tranquilizers. It puts you to sleep when levels are high enough. By inhibiting adenosine activity, caffeine keeps you awake and unable to fall asleep (it also decreases the sleep quality once you manage to fall asleep).
This sleep-inhibiting factor of caffeine stays in effect well after the buzz wears off. So although it may feel like the effect of caffeine has worn off, it’s still there on a more subtle level.
What you need to know about caffeine is that it stays in your system for a very long time. Typically, the body is capable of removing half of the caffeine in your system in about 5 hours.
This means that if you drink 200mg of caffeine (one cup of coffee), then 5 hours later there will be 100 mg left in your system.
And…
10 hours after drinking there will be 50mg left…
15 hours after drinking there will be 25mg left…
20 hours after drinking there will be 12.5mg left.
The caffeine continues to decrease in this manner. Technically speaking, it takes several days for caffeine to be completely removed from the system.
The problem is that many people appear to metabolize caffeine much more slowly than others. While the “half-life” of caffeine is 5 hours for most people, it’s been shown to be as long as 30 hours for others.
It’s possible that some insomniacs are simply slow caffeine metabolizers. Even drinking caffeine in the morning can make it difficult to fall asleep at night.
Insomnia cause 4: Stress hormones
Stress hormones like cortisol act as brain stimulants. Too much cortisol in your system at bedtime and it can become difficult to fall asleep — even if you do fall asleep, the cortisol will ruin the quality of deep sleep that normally occurs in the early hours of the night.
Our modern lifestyle imposes a significant amount of psychological stress, causing our bodies to run on cortisol, never giving our brain’s a chance to slow down and enjoy restful sleep.
Insomnia cause 5: Hypoglycemia
Hypoglycemia is a fancy word for “low blood sugar”.
A modern diet high in processed carbohydrates can throw off the body’s insulin response — insulin is a hormone that helps regulate blood sugar levels –which can cause blood sugar highs and lows throughout the day and into the night.
When blood sugar levels become too low the body must secrete cortisol to regulate levels back to normal (cortisol has many functions in the body, so it is not purely a “stress hormone”).
Most people who follow a standard modern diet have poor glucose metabolism, which often means they must eat continually throughout the day to keep blood sugar levels up. At bedtime, they may fall asleep easily, but wake up several times throughout the night.
In this case, the cause of insomnia may be because their blood sugar levels are dropping too low while the person is asleep due to lack of food — thus the body secretes high levels of cortisol in the early night and the person is never able to get a good night’s sleep.
A healthy diet will prime the body to hold bood sugar levels steady throughout the night, leading to high quality sleep.
Insomnia cause 6: Adrenal Fatigue / Thyroid Problems
Both the adrenal and thyroid glands produce hormones that help regulate energy levels and alertness. When either gland stops functioning properly, hormone levels become imbalanced and the body is unable to properly regulate the sleep-wake cycle.
Both adrenal fatigue and thyroid problems can be cause by a poor diet, lifestyle stress, excessive caffeine, and a lack of exercise.
Finding a Cure for Insomnia
Now that you know the main causes you can work on finding cures for insomnia.
Generally speaking, some of the hormonal imbalances caused by adrenal fatigue and thyroid problems can take anywhere from a few days to a few years to fix, depending on the damage. This is why insomnia can be so frustrating for some individuals — the hormonal imbalances that are likely contributing to chronic insomnia will not go away unless major lifestyle changes are made.
However, people who only experience occasional insomnia may find it easier to cure their sleeplessness, as the cause is most often attributed to caffeine or an out-of-sync circadian rhythm.
Insomnia can be tackled from many directions. Depending on your own lifestyle and goals, here are some “cures” to consider:
1. Quite caffeine. Or switch to green tea and drink it only in the morning.
2. Add an exercise routine to your day.
3. Eliminate refined sugars and carbohydrates from your diet.
4. Stop taking synthetic sleep drugs such as Ambien, Lunesta, and Sonata. All of these synthetic drugs use chemical knockout mechanisms to stop the brain in its tracks — this is not a long-term solution to insomnia and when taken habitually will inevitably make insomnia worse. To put it bluntly, the sleeping pill industry cares more about your money than your health — sad, but very true.
Consider switching to natural sleep aids that work with your body’s natural sleep mechanisms if you still need help with occasional insomnia. These include natural supplements such as 5-HTP (a precursor to serotonin) and melatonin, as well as natural herbs such as Valerian root extract. You can research further on natural sleep aids, buy each ingredient separately, or consider an all-in-one natural insomnia solution such as this one.
5. Consider a brainwave entrainment CD — Although this last solution may not work for everyone, and certainly won’t appeal to everyone, there is some proven efficacy in using brainwave entrainment for improving sleep quality. For example, the sleeptracks website offers audio CDs that use specific “pulses” to entrain the brainwave state to lower, sleep-inductive frequencies. In the case of SleepTracks, headphones are not needed.
