Insomnia – Causes and Symptoms

InsomniaDo you lie awake at night, unable to drift off for hours, only to require three different alarm clocks to wake you up in the morning? If so, you're probably not functioning very well during the day. Insomnia may not be a life-threatening illness like cancer, but the daytime drowsiness that it causes can threaten your job and your happiness. And if it makes you fall asleep behind the wheel, it can indirectly threaten not only your life, but others as well.

It's time to see your doctor if you have insomnia and:

  1. Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing, espe­cially when lying down
  2. Cough
  3. Irregular or rapid heartbeat
  4. Weakness, fatigue, or faintness
  5. Swollen stomach, legs, and ankles
  6. Breathing difficulty

Together, these symptoms may indicate congestive heart failure, which is usually a complication of other illnesses such as heart or lung disease.

  1. Loud, long, and frequent snoring
  2. Drowsiness
  3. Weight problems
  4. Early morning headaches
  5. Nighttime breathing difficulties
  6. Sexual dysfunction

These symptoms indicate you may suffer from sleep apnea.

  1. Drowsiness/frequent periods of sudden sleep
  2. Attacks of waking paralysis set off by strong emotions
  3. Intense dreams just after falling asleep or just before waking
  4. Brief, sudden loss of muscle control, sometimes causing collapse
  5. Lapse of recent memory, even in the middle of an activity
  6. Frequent nighttime awakenings
  7. Blurred vision

Narcolepsy is a rare sleeping disorder that can be easily misdiagnosed, but dream-like hallucinations and paralysis help to identify this condition. If you are diagnosed with narcolepsy, protect yourself from those sudden sleep attacks by not driving long distances or working with dangerous machinery.

  1. Decreased appetite, sweating, and tolerance for cold
  2. Chest pain
  3. Weight gain or extreme thinness
  4. Mental problems like depression or poor memory

These symptoms may mean you have hypothy­roidism, or an underactive thyroid. Although hypothyroidism is generally easy to treat with thy­roid replacement drugs, it can cause life-threaten­ing complications in rare cases, so it is important to see your doctor.