Insomnia, Part 2

Sleep was once thought to be a relatively passive process of decreased brain activity. More-recent data indicates that sleep, like consciousness, is an active process characterized by a myriad of complex electrical and neuroendocrine brain activities.

The benefits of healthy sleep are profound as are the drawbacks of deprivation. Every system of the body is affected by sleep, including physical, emotional, and cognitive functioning. Sleep promotes healing and recovery from illness, improved stamina, and the ability to learn and remember new skills.

Healthy sleep usually includes dreaming (even when it isn’t remembered), which also appears to play a powerful role in psychological and emotional health, well-being, memory, and the ability to learn new tasks.

Healthy sleep is still somewhat of a mystery since it is only partially understood and has never been artificially duplicated. While medications mimic the appearance of sleep, they do not reproduce the quality or restorative, integrative functions of sleep.

In most cases, medications used to promote sleep eventually backfire and erode it, making the condition dependent on escalating doses of drugs and more resistant to treatment.

Deep sleep has anti-inflammatory benefits. It helps restore hormonal balances, provides rest, and clears the mind like rebooting a computer.

Sleep deprivation causes significant physical and emotional effects, including changes in cardiovascular function, glucose metabolism, insulin resistance, and elevations of blood pressure, blood sugar, and cortisol.

Long-term effects of deprivation are linked to increased risk of developing many chronic diseases, including cancer, premature aging, depression, and gastrointestinal disorders.

Sleep deprivation is an effective method of persuasion, with a history of use in times of war and in indoctrination programs, including military and medical- residency training. Deprivation affects sanity, impairs vigilance, and erodes physical endurance.

Deprivation makes for more-compliant subjects who think less, concentrate poorly, and rely on automatic behaviors. Deprivation alters brain chemistry and interferes with a sense of reality, eventually disturbing mental and emotional stability.

Passage into sleep requires a gentle lapse of consciousness and awareness, coinciding with internal and external environmental supports to sustain it. In cases of chronic insomnia, the body actually looses its innate ability to relax, lapse into and sustain healthy sleep.

Sleep is an unconscious process that relies on an elegant network of biologic, chemical, hormonal, and neuroendocrine pathways collectively working together as biorhythms or circadian rhythms. When these circadian rhythms are allowed to function unhindered, they reproduce the same biochemical patterns on a daily basis.

The body relies on this system like an internal clock to efficiently manage the sleep-wake cycle. Unless it is tampered or interfered with, these internal rhythms help maintain a healthy mental, physical, and emotional balance through sleep.

When the circadian pattern is regular and uninterrupted, day after day, week after week, and year after year, the physical and emotional body learns to anticipate and depend on the pattern, preparing for these cycles many hours in advance.

Breaking the biorhythm in an irregular or unpredictable manner disrupts the intricate chemical network of hormones and neurotransmitters and forces the body to readapt, sometimes in midstream.

The body adjusts readily enough in youth, but as it ages, it is less able to change as quickly. Sometimes even simple changes in routine can lead to large disruptions of sleep and wakefulness. This is one reason why advancing age is associated with a greater number of sleep disturbances.

When insomnia first strikes, its roots are frequently traceable to one or more well-defined disturbances of medical, chemical, dietary, environmental, emotional, or behavioral causes that will be described in a subsequent article. These causes frequently combine in a complex web of interaction that can be remedied by utilizing simple sleep-hygiene techniques coupled with carefully selected classical homeopathic medicines.

This is the second part of a 10-part series.

Next week: Sleep hygiene and treatment of sleep disorders.

Dr. Whitmont is a classical homeopathic physician and internist who practices in New York. He is a clinical assistant professor of family and community medicine at New York Medical College. His website is HomeopathicMD.com