Normally we sleep six to seven hours everyday and this is quite enough for most of us to get ourselves rewind and wake up the next morning with enough power and energy to pass the day doing our day to day activities. But then sometimes a question creeps up in my mind that how much we sleep then during our entire life span? Naturally, if we sit with a pen and paper in our hands and try to calculate then obviously we might not arrive to any logical answer to this question. There was a time when people never use to give a thought about the sum total sleep of their life span but today time has changed and with that thought of humans has also changed and there were a number of researches, thesis and theories are being carried out to find out a conclusion regarding human sleep and various sleeping disorders relating it.

Sleep

Before discussing about sleeplessness or Insomnia I would like to discuss about sleep. Sleep is defined as a state of reversible unconsciousness through which our body and mind gets unconscious for sometimes and after that it comes back to normal. This state or characteristics of sleep not only hold true to humans but also to other animals and living things on our earth.

Difference between sleep and coma

There is a difference between sleep and coma. As stated above during sleep we get consciousness for sometime and after that we come back to normal. For example, if someone is in deep sleep he or she might awake if we want them to awake. This condition of sleep is totally under our control and is known as physiological phase whereas in case of coma, this is totally different and it goes in an uncontrolled manner and here the depth of unconsciousness is more. This phase of sleep is known as pathological phase.

Why we need sleep?

Even Science doesn't seem to have an answer why we need sleep after working hard or remaining awake throughout the day. But it is a fact that after hard work or tiredness when we sleep we get refreshed and our entire heart and mind gets relaxed and it also helps in developing and multiplying cells within our body. But there is another side to sleep which is related with problems like increase in heart beat, increase in blood pressure, heart attacks, strokes and problems with kidneys etc. Normally we know that we need to sleep for at least six to seven hours everyday but what we don't know that some of us could lead a healthy life by just sleeping for three to four hours everyday and there are many examples of this in our real lives.

Division of sleep

We can divide sleep into four parts like drowsiness, then light sleep followed by deep sleep and finally again light sleep before waking up. Now to sum up things we will divide this four into two parts namely rapid eye-movement sleep and non-rapid eye-movement sleep. During the first stage of our sleep we go through non-rapid eye movement sleep and as the night rolls on it very soon changes into rapid eye movement sleep. Now in our sleep we go through consciousness and unconsciousness phase as per the requirement of our body and it is relevant to mention here that in between these two phases we dream and in most cases what we dream we don't remember.

Insomnia

The word sleep is very much related with sleeplessness or Insomnia. A normal human being who goes through all the phases of sleep mentioned above is said to have a sound sleep but due to any sort of problem if he cannot get through these phases of sleep or he gets disturbed sleep, then this condition is termed as Insomnia.

There are a number of symptoms of Insomnia like we cannot our close our eyes in sleep or when we try to close our eyes we don't get sleep. If we don't get proper sleep at night, we cannot do our work properly during the day and as a result our lives become tasteless and the cloud of drowsiness surrounds us throughout the day. Sometimes even a man with a healthy body don't get proper sleep at night.

Reasons for Insomnia

Now if someone is facing this problem of sleeplessness for two weeks or so then it is not so critical matter as this is a case of temporary sleeplessness and this could happen because of a number of reasons like--

* Some sad incidences that occurred in ones life in the recent past,

* If someone is very happy because of something exciting going to happen in his or her life,

* If someone is too scared about something and

* fever, pain and some small infections like cough and cold.

Almost thirty percent people go for medical check-ups and want to seek treatment complain about lack of sleep but in most cases it has been found that their complaints are not justified. Among those thirty percent only ten percent are found to be affected with chronic Insomnia. Now let's find  out why Insomnia happens and basically it is divided into three parts for our better understanding.

Predisposing factor

The problem of sleeplessness could very easily change into insomnia if it happens for a long period of time. This can also happens because of some disease or ailments or some economic and social problems in one's life.

Precipitating factor

This is the second reason and in this case our surrounding environment plays an important role. For example if someone shifts into a new house then because of the change in the regular sleeping environment sleeplessness could occur. Besides tensions, obsessions, depressions, stress, anxiety etc creates a lot of problems and prevents us from having a good night sleep.

Perpetuating factor

Finally this last factor deals with the habit of smoking and drinking tea and coffee in excess and even drinking alcohol. When we have these things in excess it prevents us from good sleep.

Further, factors like watching television for long hours, playing video games before sleeping, surfing the net or chatting could result in improper sleep among us. At present these problems are mostly prevalent among youngsters and teenagers. They either play or study till late at night which has a very bad effect on their physical and mental stability.

Now let us find out the types of permanent sleeplessness.

* Primary failure of sleeping mechanism - At the back side of our head there is a system called ascending reticular activity system. When it is active we remain awake and if it doesn't work properly to some extent then we might get affected with Insomnia or sleeplessness.

* Secondary Insomnia - It happens because of a number of factors one of which is diseases like cancer, heart related diseases etc. We get obstructed sleep and breathing problems and sometimes one can even snore because of this.

* Paradoxical Insomnia - Here our mental stability plays an important role and we get effected with tension, lethargy to work, weakness etc.

* Adenopathy Insomnia - This is related with genetics and if someone in our family is affected with sleeplessness then genetically other members of the family might also get effected with this probably.

Treatment

To sum up things, I can only say that treatment is a must if you are facing the problem of sleeplessness from a long period of time. The base of treatment lies in the fact to increase the amount of sleep within us by following some sound procedures and therapies under the medical supervision and guidance. First of all one need to give up the bad habits like drinking and smoking. We need to follow the method of relaxation through which we should try to keep away from any tension while going to bed. Finally if we follow the method hygiene then we will be benefited immensely. Our bed room should be well furnished and decorated to create an atmosphere of sleep. The color of the walls of the rooms, clean bed-sheets and amount of lights in the room plays a vital role when it comes the matter of getting good sleep. Try to go to bed at a fixed time every day and get up at fixed time. If we try then we can cure ourselves from sleeplessness by following and maintaining some discipline in our lives.