Living with chronic insomnia, it couldn’t be an uncommon thought to have to wish you could die and leave your problems behind. But there is a new line of thought going on in this area – can you actually die through having too little sleep? They’ve actually tried to test this on lab rats – and the results were not encouraging. After two weeks with absolutely no sleep they just dropped dead.  You do hear about videogame addicts every now and then who’ve been without sleep for up to a week who drop dead. The longest that anyone has gone without sleep on record without suffering any ill effects has been 11 days (it was a boy who was preparing for a dance competition). While this sounds alarming and tabloid material in nature, this isn’t quite the same thing as insomnia where the deprivation is not total, and indeed, the lack of sleep known as insomnia comes from an inability to sleep, not deprivation.

Outside of strange cases such as these in the laboratories, you could have heard of fatal familial insomnia – this is actually a disease that corrodes the brain and as such, isn’t the same as anything normal insomniacs go through. They’ve only actually identified a couple of dozen families across the world as having this. For the rest of us, chronic insomnia is not going to kill. All it can do is weaken and predispose to serious illness. Sleeping less than six hours a day causes people to think less clearly and go about their day with less surr motor control though – and this could lead to accidents.

Too little sleep can sometimes be a behavior pattern that strengthens itself. People with chronic insomnia can develop anxiety disorder – a state where the mind begins to worry about everyday things that wouldn’t bother most people. This often gets them to worrying about taking pills every day to help for their sleep. And this is a situation that can only make things worse. But looking more closely at the problem, when people take pills for the chronic insomnia, what happens to them? Do the pills actually harm their bodies or minds in any way?

Pills like Ambien, Lunesta and Sonata are all the rage these days; they act on something in the brain called a GABA receptor, and help the brain calm down well enough to sleep. The thing people who suffer from chronic insomnia have to understand is that these drugs are safe even when used for years. There is no addiction, there are no withdrawal symptoms, and the only thing they can do is make one psychologically dependent on them. There is no chemical addiction in the body however.

Certainly, there are sleeping drugs that can seadate; but these recent varieties, also known as the Z drugs, are nothing like the sleeping pills you knew of growing up. These are safer; and these are the answer to chronic insomnia.

Related posts:

1. What Are The Causes Of Insomnia
2. The Frightening Experience of Hypnagogic Hallucinations
3. The Sobakawa Cloud Pillow Gets Mixed Reviews
4. Snoring Problems and What to Do About It
5. Treatments for Tiredness