INSOMNIA
The normal human being is born with the desire and the intention to spend a considerable portion of his time a sleep.
Whether you work or play you will still expect to add a period of oblivion to all things that make a direct appeal to your senses.
The law of sleep is the law of life. Failure to observe it must inevitably result in physical ruin. Anyone who sets aside his intention and desire to sleep will find in the long run that he has set aside to some degree his desire and intention to live.
"Mental" Insomnia:- In the majority of cases in which insomnia is directly traceable to absence of mental tranquility, it will be found that in the earlier stages the wakefulness was deliberate and intentional. The individual who goes to bed with the will to remain awake will readily achieve his purpose if he continues to feed thoughts to his brain. It may be that in a few hours before retiring he has been under some mental excitement.
He may have attended some important public function where they won applause. Or had a heated argument. Business may have suddenly upset you or perhaps is simply in danger of being upset. Stocks may be going up-or down.
In any of these or many others, sleep will be deliberately and intentionally forgotten. The mind will be kept active from choice, reviewing the social triumph achieved a few hours earlier or recalling this or that unpleasant insult hurled in an angry moment. Whatever it is - leave the thought "Better leave all this and go to sleep."
If the mental excitement has been natural and reasonably moderate, the individual may pass into unconsciousness with this imposition of the will to sleep, even though long delayed. If, however, the mental excitement has been unusual or of great intensity, it frequently happens that by the time the individual records this intention and desire to sleep, the brain which he has goaded and spurred into a feverish gallop refuses to stop.
The mind refuses to obey and the same thoughts, at first summoned with deliberate intent, return as unwelcome guests and defy every effort made to dislodge them. Hopefully for the person they will have only lost one night's sleep.
But if the cause of the mental thoughts are a continuing cause, if, let us say, the stock market is still moving contrary to the desire and interests of the casual insomniac of the night before, then there is danger of a second night being spent as fruitlessly as the first.
His condition will become aggravated from the fact that his thoughts by losing nothing in insistency will lose in meaning and significance. While active enough to keep him awake, they will cease to interest or engross him.
This will result in hurried heart action and heightened temperature and carry the victim into another wakeful day, tired, nervous and ill-natured.
It is perhaps at this stage that his greatest danger will confront him-the FEAR of Insomnia.
When those who have been a prey to the sleep dispelling mental obsessions described, approach the hour for going to bed, not only fearful that they may not sleep, but with a firm conviction that they will not sleep, their condition may be viewed with alarm. Such an attitude is negative and encourages sleeplessness.
It is vital that insomniacs of this character acquire the right point of view. They must learn to view their insomnia in the right perspective. To be sure, a little insomnia disturbs the aspect of the whole world and it early becomes impossible for the victim of it to take an impersonal view of his disability.
Dreading the nights he sees in anticipation a repetition of previous evenings and you'll feel dismayed, desolate and despairing. Convinced that they will not sleep and frequently they need more than verbal assurance to have this conviction dislodged. The person of this sort of wakefulness must help to overcome his difficulty by cultivating a will to sleep. All deliberate tasks of the will are irksome and it is easier to follow along the line of compelling natural desires.
The will to stay awake is easier than the will to sleep, because the incentive to the former is very keen at the time when it is first essayed. But in the normal man, the will to remain awake is short-lived. It is short-lived from the point of view of comfort and not very long-lived from the point of view of safety.
The insomniac should be encouraged by the realisation of the fact that the distribution of sleep and wakefulness is a process which goes on according to natural law. The natural law is to sleep and the will to obey this law is the natural will. When, therefore, we seek to persuade the sufferer from wakefulness to cultivate a will to sleep, to develop a method where before he had been playing a speculative game, we are, in fact, simply asking him to conform to a natural law.
When Nature desires that we should sleep, it is no light and trivial whim that may be waived lightly aside, but a formal and definite command, transgressed at heavy cost. We cannot bargain over this matter. We cannot modify Nature's age-long will that we should sleep by offering her tithes from the fruits of forced wakefulness. Sleep is the method by which we obtain wakefulness. It is the thing first to be desired because through it alone comes wakefulness. It is to be desired not in some wilful, fitful, coquettish way, but in nature's way: imperiously, systematically and without abatement.
The law of sleep towers above man's activities as high as the laws of Nature raise themselves above the rules of men.
He is the victim of misplaced confidence, a relic of misdirected endeavour. Once on a time he knew what sleep was - oblivion, an uncharted country, known only in terms of its borderlands. Like most people who know too much about the unknown, he now suffers through the possession of a new and particular kind of knowledge.
He knows at heavy expense to himself a state that is neither good sleeping nor good waking, a state negative of all good results, for which there is the especially coined word INSOMNIA.
Its special characteristic may be defined as the absence of that degree of sleep which we find to be grateful and at the same time necessary for the formation of successful and happy living. It is a strange form of being awake, toward which we are most bitterly antagonistic.
He must cease his useless endeavour to think about insomnia, to solve its mysteries, to measure its dangers, and to mitigate its discomforts. It is towards Sleep that he must turn his attention. To solve its secrets should be his endeavour. To be able to turn the key which opens its doors or at least to hide the key with which either his friend or his enemy would shut the door against him and bar him out, should be his highest aspiration.
INSOMNIA DUE TO PHYSICAL CAUSES
Before attempting to instruct the sleepless as to the method and manner of overcoming insomnia the form and character of the evil from which they suffer must be ascertained.
Insomnia not a Disease:- Insomnia is a symptom, not a disease. It a by-product, the effect of definite causes, which must first be removed before any progress can be reasonably expected in the work of regaining sleep. For the purpose of determining the proper treatment to be adopted, it may be well to divide insomnia broadly into two distinct classes. First, insomnia springing from purely physical causes. Second, insomnia derived from mental, moral or emotional causes.
The first has its origin in physical pain or discomfort. It may be a mashed thumb, rheumatism, cold feet, indigestion, influenza or toothache. Generally the treatment here is simple. Remove the cause and the effect will disappear. Ease the aching tooth and sleep will come.
The other insomnia is born from grief, cares, expectations, anxieties, great business, and all violent perturbations of the mind. It may be due to anything that excites and makes unaccustomed appeal to the special senses. This is the most persistent variety.
Before taking up the detailed analysis of mental insomnia, let us consider the less complex form of physical insomnia.
"Physical" Insomnia:- Grouped under this head are many passing discomforts which, from the fact that they occasion only temporary sleeplessness, only enter incidentally into a study of insomnia. A slight irritation of the throat accompanied by an annoying tickling sensation of the larynx is quite sufficient to keep the emotional human being awake.
Trivial matters such as chilblains or an itching skin disturb sleep as effectively as rheumatism or indigestion. While you can take some cough medicine to ease the throat and put some cream on the itching skin in the case of indigestion or rheumatism the matter is not so simple.
Of all the varieties of indigestion which cause disturbed sleep those that give flatulency and pain, are the worst.
The person suffering from indigestion must go and see the doctor to give himself a fair chance to get over insomnia.
Of the useful treatment of sleeplessness due to flatulence, is to take a glass of hot water at bedtime and this is usually very helpful.
Its efficiency may sometimes be enhanced by the addition such as a few drops of drops of peppermint. It should be taken a half hour before going to bed, as the movements of undressing facilitate the expulsion of gas from the stomach by sweeping it into small intestines where contact with the bile, which is antiseptic, prevents further fermentation.
Dry heat to the pit of the stomach, such as a hot water bag or a hot plate, or vigorous friction and manipulation of the abdomen, is sometimes very helpful.
There are many conditions of circulation that cause insomnia. Among these, cold feet is the most important. It is, I fancy, the commonest immediate cause of insomnia. Itself a symptom of disordered digestion, constipation or anemia.
Much can be done to counteract its effect by a few simple measures, such as holding the feet for a few seconds alternately under a stream of hot and cold water, then frictioning the feet and legs vigorously and putting them in warm towel up to and above the knees. Or if this is too much trouble a hot water bottle is so much easier - though it is much less useful.
Coldness of the feet is apparently the cause of sleeplessness in many brain-workers who are free from anemia and poor circulation of blood. It is not a negative coldness which can be overcome by external' warmth. It has to be righted through the general circulation. It is in such cases that a hot, mildly stimulating drink such as hot milk, cocoa or horlicks on retiring is most beneficial. Such a procedure is particularly potent in overcoming insomnia if the feet are thrust into cold water and vigorously rubbed for a few minutes.
The patient will not ascribe his inability to sleep to malnutrition or to poor circulation, and since their mind is free from mental anxiety concerning the stock market or his wife/husband having an affair, so will be at a loss to explain the sleeplessness to themselves.
At this point he will be likely to take quick alarm at his condition and to jump at the conclusion that his inability to sleep is a disease in itself and not merely a symptom. He will become panic-stricken at the apparently in-explainable, and instead of harboring the constructive thought of sleep will fasten and brood upon the destructive thought of insomnia.
