5 Things People With Chronic Insomnia Want You To Know

Insomnia is the most well known sleep disorder ― affecting as many as 10 percent of all Americans, according to estimates. It’s simply characterized by having trouble either falling asleep or staying asleep. For people who suffer from chronic insomnia, that means at least three nights of troubled sleep per week that lasts for at least three months in a row. But if you’ve never experienced it, you probably don’t truly understand what insomnia feels like. “[There] are really long and upsetting nights,” Susan Rutigliano, a 32-year-old from New York City who has struggled with insomnia since she was 17, told The Huffington Post. “Those are the nights where its just you alone with your thoughts, crippling exhaustion and just waiting for the sun to come up so you can start getting ready to go to work and feel like hell the entire day.” Sleep medicine doctors prescribe a specific type of psychotherapy to help people with insomnia ― and there are also several medications approved to help people who struggle with insomnia (though they are known to come with a host of unpleasant and sometimes scary side effects). But that doesn’t mean the trek to more restful nights of sleep for people with chronic insomnia is easy ― or that those therapies always work for everyone. “[Those people can] get stuck in this cycle of not sleeping well ― which can last for decades if left untreated,” Philip Gehrman, assistant ...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news