Skip to content 
Ready to turn inspiration into action? Explore our nursing dissertation writing help now and transform your vision into reality with our expert assistance.
Insomnia and its Effects
The inability to fall asleep or stay asleep is a common problem among insomniacs. PSYC FPX 1000 Assessment 4 Hypnos is affected by many factors including anxiety, depression, illness and many others. The above problem is in a position to influence both the quantity of sleep one gets and the quality of sleep. Globally, the prevalence of it ranges between 2 percent and 25 percent of the population (Yun & Jo, 2021). These things happen to a person’s physical and mental health when they have insomnia.
Apart from interfering with sleep onset and maintenance, insomnia has other consequences on the body and the brain. It manifests itself as worry and difficulties in thinking in various regions of the mind in the case of insomnia. Another consequence of a lack of sleep is that one is at a higher risk of developing some diseases such as major depression and Alzheimer’s dementia (de Zambotti et al., 2022).
But insomnia does not only impact these mental disorders; it also impacts many body systems including the immune, endocrine, and circulatory systems, and increases the likelihood of many diseases including type 2 diabetes, hypertension, cancer, and infections. It is assumed that insomnia impacts the whole organism because sleep is dynamic, variable, and one of the most fundamental physiological processes (Yun & Jo, 2021).
Impact of Insomnia on Physical and Mental Health According to Literature
PSYC FPX 1000 Assessment 4 Insomnia patients suffer from difficulty in concentration, memory and learning, attention, and other cognitive functions of the brain. Stress and worry increase when you are deprived of sleep and this is because cortisol levels rise during the night. Those who have insomnia are known to have difficulties with concentration, attention, and working memory than those in a healthy control group (Brownlow et al., 2020).
It is therefore clear that self-regulation of emotions is a factor that is related to insomnia. Those who have poor sleep turn out to be more irritated, stressed, and anxious than people who have had enough sleep. Insomnia patients have been found to have a problem with their heartbeats and this affects their ability to regulate their mood (Vanek et al., 2020).
Click here to get PSYC FPX 1000 Assessment 1 Conditioning and Learning Plan
Insomnia does not only have an impact on mental health, but it also results in neurological diseases. According to a study done by different scholars, people who have sleeplessness disorders are more likely to develop depression than those who do not have the problem of sleeplessness. PSYC FPX 1000 Assessment 4 Insomnia without other psychiatric diseases may also cause suicidal thoughts (Janda et al., 2020). Also, insomnia increases the chance of dementia. Due to the fact that beta-amyloid is produced at night, Irwin and Vitiello note that individuals with sleep disorders and dementia have lower levels of it.
PSYC FPX 1000 Assessment 4 Phasic Vasoconstriction
Some of the functions of the autonomic nerve system are control of the heart rate, phasic vasoconstriction, skin boundaries and many others. The following are some of the ways in which the above-named factors can be altered by not sleeping enough. Sleep deprivation can also impact the hormonal system which has an outcome of conditions such as insulin resistance (Brouwer et al. , 2021).
In addition, cytokines are involved in sleep during non-rapid eye movement that indicates the interrelation between sleep and the immune system. It is clear that cytokines fluctuate due to the occurrence of insomnia. This can reduce the strength of your immune system, bring inflammation, and sometimes even death in the worst cases. Since PSYC FPX 1000 Assessment 4 sleep deprivation increases the heart rate, and alters the blood pressure, research has indicated that sleep deprivation results to heart diseases and high blood pressure. A study has shown that people who do not sleep properly are at the risk of contracting lung diseases and cancers of the thyroid, and breast among others (Poluektov, 2021).
Interventions to Reduce the Effects of Insomnia
It can be managed at the initial stage by altering the sleep patterns and stopping some activities that may lead to insomnia such as stress or any other ailment. The following can be done if the above solutions do not work in order to assist in reducing sleeplessness and its impacts:
CBT can assist sleepless individuals to sleep without the use of drugs (Rossman, 2019). PSYC FPX 1000 Assessment 4 therapy therefore combines both cognitive therapy and behavioral treatment. A study done by Asarnow and Manber (2019) indicates that behavioral therapy assists individuals to reduce on activities that prevent them from sleeping and instead engage in activities that promote sleep. Other techniques of behavioral therapy are stimulus control, sitting idle without any activity, learning relaxation techniques, sleep schedule control, and many more.
PSYC FPX 1000 Assessment 4 Behavioral Treatment Step
- Stimulus control treatment involves removing the thing that prevents you from having normal sleep.
- If a person desires to sleep early, the person must stay awake in bed without aiming to sleep. So that whenever an individual attempts to sleep, it makes him or her nervous.
- Some of the activities that can help you relax include; taking a light exercise, practicing yoga, and performing any other exercise that can help you to sleep.
- Sleep restriction is the refusal to take naps in the course of the day and retire to bed later than usual. It decreases the amount of sleep that you get but increases the effectiveness of the sleep that you get. Over time, even time will heal the wound so also sleep.
Cognitive management of sleep disorders Cage gets rid of the depression, anxiety, and negative thinking that prevents normal sleep (Espie et al., 2019).
Conclusion
Insomnia is a condition that affects individuals and makes them have difficulties in sleeping, and this affects their health in the body and the mind. Insomniacs are offered a number of drugs that make you sleep and therapies for the brain. Patients who are having a hard time sleeping will be more relieved mentally and physically after this type of treatment.
References
Asarnow, L. D., & Manber, R. (2019). Cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia in depression. Sleep Medicine Clinics, 14(2), 177–184. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsmc.2019.01.009
Brouwer, A., van Raalte, D. H., Lamers, F., Rutters, F., Elders, Petra. J. M., Van Someren, Eus. J. W., Snoek, Frank. J., Beekman, Aartjan. T. F., & Bremmer, M. A. (2021). Insulin resistance as a marker for the immune-metabolic subtype of depression. Journal of Affective Disorders, 295, 1371–1376. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2021.08.151
Brownlow, J. A., Miller, K. E., & Gehrman, P. R. (2020). Insomnia and cognitive performance. Sleep Medicine Clinics, 15(1), 71–76. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsmc.2019.10.002
de Zambotti, M., Yuksel, D., Kiss, O., Barresi, G., Arra, N., Volpe, L., King, C., & Baker, F. C. (2022). A virtual reality-based mind–body approach to downregulate psychophysiological arousal in adolescent insomnia. DIGITAL HEALTH, 8, 205520762211078. https://doi.org/10.1177/20552076221107887
Espie, C. A., Emsley, R., Kyle, S. D., Gordon, C., Drake, C. L., Siriwardena, A. N., Cape, J., Ong, J. C., Sheaves, B., Foster, R., Freeman, D., Costa-Font, J., Marsden, A., & Luik, A. I. (2019). Effect of digital cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia on health, psychological well-being, and sleep-related quality of life: a randomized clinical trial. JAMA Psychiatry, 76(1), 21. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2018.2745
Irwin, M. R., & Vitiello, M. V. (2019). Implications of sleep disturbance and inflammation for Alzheimer’s disease dementia. The Lancet Neurology, 18(3), 296–306. https://doi.org/10.1016/s1474-4422(18)30450-2
Janda, K., Wojtkowska, K., Jakubczyk, K., Antoniewicz, J., & Skonieczna-Żydecka, K. (2020). Passiflora incarnata in neuropsychiatric disorders—a systematic review. Nutrients, 12(12), 3894. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu12123894
Poluektov, M. G. (2021). Sleep and immunity. Neuroscience and Behavioral Physiology, 51(5), 609–615. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11055-021-01113-2
Rossman, J. (2019). American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine, 13(6), 544–547. https://doi.org/10.1177/1559827619867677
Vanek, J., Prasko, J., Genzor, S., Ociskova, M., Holubova, M., Sova, M., Kantor, K., Slepecky, M., & Nesnidal, V. (2020). Insomnia and emotion regulation. Neuro Endocrinology Letters, 41(5), 255–269. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33315339/
Chronotherapeutic efficacy of suvorexant on sleep quality and metabolic parameters in patients with type 2 diabetes and insomnia. Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice, 169, 108412. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.diabres.2020.108412
Yun, S., & Jo, S. (2021). Understanding insomnia as systemic disease. Yeungnam University Journal of Medicine, 38(4), 267–274. https://doi.org/10.12701/yujm.2021.01424
