Insomnia is the complaint of inadequate or poor quality sleep that interferes with normal daytime functioning.
For some people, insomnia means difficulty in falling asleep or waking up frequently during the night with problems getting back to sleep. For others, it is waking up too early in the morning and/or experiencing unrefreshing sleep. It can be transient or chronic.
Everyone has a rough night or two, or short-term (transient) insomnia. Chronic insomnia, though, lasts for more than a month.
Sleep is essential for health providing rest and restoration for the mind and body. It is the regular period in every 24 hours when we are unconscious and unaware of our surroundings. There are two main types of sleep:
We move between REM and non-REM sleep about five times throughout the night, dreaming more as we get towards the morning.
During a normal night, we will also have short periods of waking. These last one or two minutes and happen every two hours or so. We are not usually aware of them. We are more likely to remember them if we feel anxious or if there is something else going on - noises outside, our partner snoring etc.
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