Frustration and an influx of distracting thoughts, I sighed, led me to
sleeplessness again.
Insomnia, or simply problems with sleep, is described as the common problem
that youngsters are confronted with. As the data health line pointed out in 2019,
seventy-three percent of the high school students did not reach a healthy amount
of sleep. It also provides some of the symptoms students often feel, such as
waking up several times in the middle of the night, finding it hard to get to sleep
and so forth.
The fact that sleep is crucial to everyone is well-established. A post from the
University of Michigan in 2020 found that your body relies on sleep to function
productively in aspects such as metabolism, the prevention of the risk of chronic
illness, ability to fight infection, and physical or mental performance on the
following day.
As long as we continue to experience problems with sleep, we have to
acknowledge that it does have a negative impact on our daily life, making us
feel unproductive during the day. Taking myself as an example, there was a time
when I didn’t sleep well the day before, and the next morning when I was having maths class, I felt so overwhelmed and exhausted that I can not focus on the teacher; my brain was in a muddle, and I cannot even solve a simple question when the teacher called on me. As a result, I got a not very high mark in the evaluation of class performance.
As the research from the Sleep Foundation shows, anxiety causes the majority
of us to experience unwell sleep. Moreover, they claim that a lack of sleep can
in turn worsen anxiety, triggering a negative cycle. Due to this, understanding
the relationship between the two could refine the condition of insomnia.
Anxiety is a feeling of worry and inability to relax, as a survey conducted by
Single Care in 2020. 62% reported experiencing some level of anxiety. While
there are no exact answers to what causes it, researchers do report that it is due
to the interaction of multiple factors.
The electronics you are holding right now are one of the major factors. In
today’s world, phones are an essential tool for us, whether when it is used to
connect with our friends or to watch YouTube videos when we are bored. But,
meanwhile, your body is processing and experiencing a negative change.
The more time you spend on your device, the more likely you are to become
addicted. Therefore, when someone takes your device away, you get into a
situation where you don't know what to do and panic, desperately trying to get it
back. As such, your brain slowly creates anxiety without noticing.
Thus, we know that electronics are one of the main causes of anxiety, which,
consequently, leads to insomnia. In order to solve the problem of insomnia, we
should understand how to healthily use electronics.
The Henry Ford Health organization suggested that to minimize anxiety caused
by the Internet, every teenager and adult should spend a maximum of two hours
on their social media per day, and avoid smartphone use two hours before
bedtime.
If you can do this, you may find that your sleep is more restful than ever
before. But for people who still feel anxious at this point, try the following tips.
● Take a pause: The purpose is to take a step back from the problem to
clear your mind. For example: Practice yoga, listen to music, meditate or
get a massage.
● Change up your attitude: Accept the fact that you can't control everything.
Take your stress to this perspective: Is it really as bad as you think it is?
If you could follow these pieces of advice, I believe you can already say
goodbye to insomnia.
However, some people might still have doubts: why can't you take sleeping
pills before bedtime? It's true that sleeping pills can put you to sleep immediately.
However, unlike most other medications, sleeping pills have severe side effects.
Some common symptoms can be dizziness, headaches, abnormal dreams,
problems remembering things and concentrating. Long-term usage can make
you dependent on it, requiring higher and higher doses to get the same sleep-inducing
effects.
Instead of taking sleeping pills, Charlene Gamaldo, M.D., medical director of
Johns Hopkins Center has pointed out that exercising works the same or even
better than these medicines, “We have solid evidence that exercise does, in fact,
help you fall asleep more quickly and improves sleep quality.”
So, remind yourself of the approaches we could use to deal with insomnia
when you find that you can't sleep at night or when you are sleepy during the
day and didn’t have enough sleep. These problems can have adverse effects on
your lifestyle and mental health.