Medical Conditions and Insomnia

By | April 16, 2023

There are diseases and medical conditions that can cause insomnia. This is because they either cause physical discomfort or because of hormonal and metabolic imbalance. Anxiety is another factor that brings about insomnia. If you are always conscious and worrying about your disease, you are bound to lose sleep over it.Hypertension is a disease where the blood pressure is abnormally elevated. The incidence of this disease continues to rise. Before, this used to be found mostly in people with advanced age; but now it can be found even in children and young adults as well. This is attributed to the present lifestyle which became sedentary due to advances in technology. People in the present time eat more and move less and they are exposed to more stress at work, in school and from the environment. One of the symptoms of hypertension is neck pain or numbness and this can hamper sleep.Another disease that causes insomnia is asthma. The number of asthmatics are also increasing because of stress and environmental pollution. The thing about asthma is that it is related to the body’s biorhythm and is usually exacerbated in the evenings and early morning. And because they have difficulty breathing, they also cannot sleep.Hyperthyroidism prevents sleep because the high thyroid hormone levels keeps you hyped up even during the night when it should have gone down. Restlessness and tremors are felt even at night. Diabetes is another disease where you easily get hungry even if you eat a lot. You are also thirsty most of the time despite the amount of fluids you drank. Because you drink a lot of liquids, you tend to urinate a lot as well and this will wake you up in the middle of the night.Skin diseases like skin asthma, winter rash, and other pruritic skin conditions can prevent sleep because of the itchiness. Like asthma, it is worse at night and early morning. The worse thing is that the more you scratch, the more it itches, forming a vicious cycle.These are just some of the medical condition that can disrupt sleep and eventually cause insomnia. Treating them will help in reducing insomnia as well. If insomnia persists even after the cause is gone, it can be relieved by behavioural therapy and some over the counter drugs.