Familie Kontoret

Archive for December, 2011

Insomnia is a serious sleeping disorder that should to be addressed more often. When you have insomnia your whole life is adversely affected. Insomnia not only affects the quality and enjoyment of your life, but also greatly affects everyone around you. Your ability to cope with everything going on in your life is decreased and your personal and work relationships suffer. Insomnia can be a viscous cycle which can escalate the longer it continues. One bad night’s sleep leads on to the next, decreasing your ability to cope with life’s stress. This increased stress leads to more sleepless nights, and the cycle continues…..

As you can see insomnia is a never ending cycle. Unless you first identify what is causing you to have insomnia and then take some action steps to deal with your insomnia you will never get out of your bad sleep cycle.

The Common Causes of Insomnia are:

Stress

In modern society stress levels are on the rise, to the point that some people find their lives under constant stress. When you are stressed, it affects your ability to sleep properly; this is mainly due to the way your body responds to stress. We have all experienced insomnia due to money worries or some other reason. This is when you can’t seem to quiet your mind in order to get to sleep because you are trying to work out how you are going to pay the bill or fix the problem etc. All of these scenarios keep going around and around in your head and sleep evades you.

What is the result of this? You end up tired and feeling more stressed the next day when you need to deal with the situation that was causing you the stress in the first place. The greater your stress level, the more disrupted your sleep will be. By taking some measures to lower your stress level you will find that your sleep improves greatly.

Environmental Issues

What is happening around you when you are in bed at night greatly affects the way you sleep. There are quite a few things that can disturb you at night like: lighting, noise, company and temperature. There is nothing more annoying than being in a deep sleep and the dog barks, or your partner is snoring and keeping you awake. Some environmental issues are easily fixed and some are not so easy. The best thing to do is to look at each one individually and decided what you can do about it.

Food and Drink

What we eat and drink also play a huge part in how we sleep. By having a well balanced high fiber diet you will sleep better than if you eat highly processed foods. Your consumption of sugars, alcohol and caffeine greatly affects the way you sleep. By reducing the amount of sugars, alcohol and caffeine you take on a daily basis you will find that you feel healthier, and sleep better.

Lifestyle Choice

How you live your life and the choices you make can also affect the way you sleep. By increasing the amount of regular exercise that you have you will find that you sleep better and feel healthier. A lot of people are unaware of the fact that smoking can also disrupt your ability to sleep. So by living a healthier life and getting into a regular sleeping routine you will find that you sleep better.

In this article I have briefly covered some of the main issues that cause you to have insomnia. By finding out what is causing your insomnia you are taking the first steps to having a healthy night sleep.

While there is no definitive cause or cure for an anxiety disorder, many medical experts and researchers agree that genetics as well as environmental factors play a strong roll in the development of this mental illness. Research studies conducted have shown that individuals who have a family history of anxiety disorders including panic disorders, social anxiety disorders, and OCD or obsessive compulsive disorders are at a much higher risk for developing these disorders than the general population.

Researchers who have studied the link between genetics and anxiety have also concluded that there is more than one gene that plays a roll in the development of anxiety and that environmental and social factors are equally important when it comes to determining who will develop an anxiety disorder and who will not.

The Risk Factors of Family History in the Development of OCD and Panic Disorders

Recent findings from research studies conducted have shown strong evidence that OCD or obsessive compulsive disorder runs in families with individuals who have a parent or sibling with OCD having a five times greater risk of developing this disorder than the general population. Researchers not only believe that environmental factors play a roll, but that there is also a genetic link.

Studies conducted have shown that a parent with OCD can have a different compulsion than their child who also has developed OCD. For instance, while they both have obsessive behaviors, the parent may have the obsessive compulsion of washing their hands while the child may have a different compulsion such as having to count to an exact number over and over again. This indicates that there is genetic link as while they both display the obsessive behaviors, their compulsions are quite different.

Of all the research done in an attempt to link genetics with anxiety disorders, panic disorders have been the focus of the most extensive research. The majority of the results from these studies have concluded that panic disorders commonly run in families with studies showing that individuals with a close relative who has a panic disorder being eight times more likely to develop PD.

Studies conducted with twins also show strong evidence that biological factors play a roll. These results have shown that if one twin has a panic disorder the other twin has as much as a forty percent chance of developing one as well.

Social Anxiety Disorder and Genetics

Scientists and researchers also believe that certain individuals may be prone to social anxiety disorder or SAD due to genetics and that roughly one third of individuals who have a family history of SAD are likely to develop this disorder.

While a specific gene has not been identified as the cause of SAD, certain chromosomes have been found that are associated with panic disorders and agoraphobia and these conditions share the same characteristics of SAD, therefore, it is believed that other chromosomes will eventually be discovered that have a link to SAD.

While research has shown that genetics can be responsible in some cases of anxiety disorders, a combination of biological and environmental factors are most likely the causes in the majority of individuals who develop these disorders.

Characteristics of bipolar disorder are many as they manifest themselves on the patients in different ways. They are also experienced in varying ways by many people as there are those that go for long periods of inconsistent moods and others suffer from episodes of depression and mania. Despite there being some general characteristics of bipolar disorder, they are collectively grouped into mania and depressions because these are the two main phases of this disorder. We will look at all the characteristics that fall under the two but it is important you note that they might vary from one patient to another.

The main feature of bipolar disorder in the mania phase is elevated moods which can either be jovial or happy. Such moods are usually triggered by the prevailing conditions that many of the patients are totally ignorant of. There is also increased energy that is a common characteristic with bipolar disorder patients. They tend to wake up very early even than their usual times and are ready to do any type of work as they feel that they have a lot of energies to accomplish that. Their activity levels are also above that of a normal individual. Bipolar disorder patients furthermore register increased self-esteem where they generate new and extraordinary ideas that unfortunately lead them into overspending their cash through impulse buys.

Most of the patients who fall under the mania phase of bipolar disorder become less social but have an increased sexual urge than in normal conditions. Others pretend that they know a lot and are prone to hearing and seeing many hallucinations. In the depression phase, characteristics of bipolar disorder are mostly the opposite of what mania phase patients experience. The most recognizable feature is lowered moods that affect their functioning and the way they relate with other people. Patients furthermore lack energy, talk less, have inadequate sleep and may in worst cases contemplate committing suicide.

These patients are also very emotional and tend to get angered very fast by minor issues that even do not concern them. On top of that, they lack appetite and suffer from concentration problems especially at work or in class depending on their occupation. When a patient is experiencing symptoms under this phase, he always feels guilty of anything bad that happens in the surrounding environment even though he is not involved at all in any way. There are other minor characteristics of bipolar disorder but these are the main ones and the most dangerous to a patient.