TTU Research
TTU Research
RESEARCH ABOUT
INSOMNIA
I Causes, Symptoms and Solution I
Presented by
Kerma Mohammed Moncef G3
2019 - 2020
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1.Abstract:
Insomnia is a mental disorder that has been increasing during this last
decade especially among the young generation, this research attempts to
identify and explain the nature of the Insomnia in addition to its symptoms and
causes and the consequences of chronic insomnia on both the body and the
mind and last but not least find a solution or set for solutions that aid in the fight
against insomnia and help finding a solution that fits most patients and grant a
greater chance for them to recover and heal. The methods used to deal with
insomnia in this research include the behaviourist and cognitive approach of
Bloomfield in addition to stimulus treatment and mindfulness treatment that
target mainly the pattern of negative behaviours that ultimately cause the
insomnia to proliferate, the result of using these type of treatments translate
directly in the recovery of several chronic patients in addition for them to gain
better and more restorative sleep pattern that aid in gaining better mental health
which shield the patients from getting other mental issues specially depression
that add to the severity of the situation.
The research is concluded by proclaiming that the attempted methods have
scientifically proven that the chronic disorder known as insomnia can be fixed
even for the helpless cases and that’s by conditioning the behaviour of patients
and their mental state hence granting them better chance for more effective
sleep that eventually cause the symptoms of insomnia to fade and consequently
healing them.
2.Introduction:
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The term insomnia is used in a variety of ways in the medical literature and
popular press. Most often, insomnia is defined by the presence of an individual's
report of difficulty with sleep. For example, in survey studies, insomnia is
defined by a positive response to either question, “Do you experience difficulty
sleeping?” or “Do you have difficulty falling or staying asleep?” In the sleep
literature, insomnia is sometimes used as a term to describe the presence of
polysomnographic evidence of disturbed sleep. Thus, the presence of a long
sleep latency, frequent nocturnal awakenings, or prolonged periods of
wakefulness during the sleep period or even frequent transient arousals are
taken as evidence of insomnia. Thus, insomnia has been thought of both as a
symptom and as a sign. However, for the purpose of this paper, the term
insomnia will be used as a disorder with the following diagnostic criteria: (1)
difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep or nonrestorative sleep; (2) this difficulty
is present despite adequate opportunity and circumstance to sleep; (3) this
impairment in sleep is associated with daytime impairment or distress; and (4)
this sleep difficulty occurs at least 3 times per week and has been a problem for
at least 1 month.
During the recent years, the increased numbers of population that suffer from
the symptoms of insomnia gravely increased in particular among the younger
population (from 18 to 25) which effect the physical and mental health of the
patients and overall lower their productivity in their everyday life. This pressing
issue became a real danger and serious threat which pose a question that need to
be answered: How to deal with Insomnia?
Unlike some common illnesses like psychosis or sleep paralysis, insomnia is
considered a disorder; a disorder is a condition associated with negative
consequences, and importantly, these consequences are not a normal result of
the condition but rather the result of some sort of pathological response in other
words, it is a result of a pattern of bad habits, these habits can be isolated and
tackled individually to break this chain of events and ultimately heal insomnia,
the methods used to achieve this results can only be done with the assistance of
behaviourism and stimulus treatment that is entirely based on Bloomfield
psychological studies, through conditioning patients behaviour by gradually
adjusting some variables the insomniac patients can be theoretically treated and
consequently restore their natural restorative sleep habits.
3.Literature review:
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Insomnia and sleep prevention issues have been widely associated with
somniphobia which means the irrational fear of sleep, bed , bedrooms and
anything that resemble the process of going to sleep, The relation between
Insomnia and somniphobia is well-established; a meta-analysis by Simon Parkin
(2008) concluded that avoiding bedrooms as much as possible by the insomniac
patients and going there only when they are completely exhausted helped them
getting better and more stable sleep process. However, in this research other
mental and physical factors have been neglected that are critical to the condition
and mental state of patients. In the light of these factors, researchers have
become increasingly interested in the effects of these external variables. Perloff
(2014) theorizes that the practicing sport or napping or taking long rides may
influence its impact on patient’s mental state, he also mentioned that addiction
to smokes or caffein or energy drinks or any type of artificial stimulates can
cause and increase the symptoms of insomnia. Several empirical studies have
focused on mental and psychological causes of insomnia in adolescent teenagers
(UCLA Health, 2014) and in young adults (MayoClinic, 2016; Sleepfoundation
2020; Cohen, Newton-John & Slater, 2017), while a systematic review by
Symon Parkin (2018) confirmed a relationship between poor mental condition
and overall bad state of brain and the appearance of insomnia.
Across these studies, there is consistent evidence that insomnia is indeed
linked with fear (somniphobia), mental and physical condition of the patients
and the overall all state of the body. Nonetheless, there is a lack of robust
research on more practical solutions that benefits from the direct predictable
scientific based psychology like behaviourism and stimulus treatment and
exploiting the ability to reverse engineer the symptoms of insomnia which is by
far the fastest and safest method that can be used on almost all patients.
4.Body:
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Prevalence of insomnia:
This is especially true among the elderly. Among younger individuals, difficulty
falling asleep is often associated with a phase delay syndrome. However, in the
elderly, phase advance syndrome results in reports of difficulty initiating sleep,
maintaining sleep, and experiencing early morning awakenings. The most
common comorbidities associated with insomnia are psychiatric disorders. It is
estimated that 40% of all insomnia patients have a coexisting psychiatric
condition. Among these psychiatric disorders, depression is the most common,
and insomnia is a diagnostic symptom for depressive and anxiety disorders.
Effects of insomnia:
Experimenting insomnia:
In the second day (48 hours) of experiment the mild symptoms of exhaustion
became stronger and I experienced an overall sense of weakness in addition my
reaction speed greatly decreased from 0.3 second to 0.93 second which is 0.68
second slower than the natural response and my cognitive ability slightly
decreased and it became harder to focus on what others say and my attention
span scored 15 which is 5 second longer then the last test.
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Day3:
In the Third and last day (72 hours) of experiment the exhaustion became
extreme and I was unable to function or do even the most simple tasks, even
thinking became hard and I start to experience slight hallucination, at this point
I had the symptoms of an insomniac patient and the result of my tests have
decreased even more, the reaction test scored over 1.5 seconds which at this
speed doesn’t even count as a reaction, my cognitive ability got mildly
inaccurate and I couldn’t focus on what others say nor understand it, the
attention spam was much longer about 20 seconds and by the end of the
experiment my body started to get numb and started to force me into sleep even
when I attempted to resist the frontal lobe of the brain which is responsible for
the consciousness was already failing therefor the subconscious part of the brain
which resemble the brain stem along with the inner spine cord stem cells took
control and force me to sleep hence ending the experiment.
Results of the experiments:
1.4
1.2
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
Day 1 Day 2 Day 3
From analysing the graph above the correlation between the time staying
awake and the extended time of reaction is apparent, hence the blue columns
represent the abnormal time of response the insomniac has that kept increasing
in relation to time as same as the orange columns that represented the difference
between the abnormal time of reaction in a given day with the supposed natural
reaction of a normal person.
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20
15
10
0
Day 1 Day 2 Day 3
The graph represent the effect of insomnia on the attention span, as viewed in
the graph above the longer the brain remain without sleep the longer and slower
the attention span get as represented by the blue columns, this increase con go
up as to double the time of attention of a regular person which is represented in
the grey columns, however the change is gradual which is represented by
orange columns that keep increasing in relation to the number of days past
proving that sleeplessness indeed effect the psychological aspect of brain.
Note: the attention span in the context of this experiment doesn’t mean how
longer a person can focus on a given object and remain focused but rather how
long does a person zone out (lose the chain of his thought) when staring or
looking at a given object.
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Cognitive experiment
Insomniac
Normal Cognitive
CognitiveState
State
Visual
Visual Auditory
Auditory
Sensory
Sensory Unrecognized
Unreconized
The charts above represent both the cognitive ability of the insomniac person
and the normal person which were extracted from the previously mentioned
experience hence the chart on the right is at the end of the 72 hour and show in
comparison to the normal state illustrated on the left the drastic change in the
overall receptive ability of the brain, for instance the dominate receptive sensor
in the normal state is visual, that is to say the eyes dominate this chart for how
important they contribute in the ability of any given person to recognize and
analyse the environment surrounding it; however in the insomniac state the
function of eyes is greatly reduced due to the prevention of sleep, the part of
brain that is responsible for processing the visual information into recognizable
data cant function properly and result in blurry vision and in some severe case
it leads to hallucinations, other important organ is the ears which unlike what
commonly know is not only responsible for the audible input but also a vital
organ that grant the body stability and balance thanks to a small and fragile
organ in the inner ear which means that in addition for being worse and more
difficult for the insomniacs to hear and understand language, it is even more
hard to preserve their balance when performing any activity that require
dynamic movement, the sensory system that relate to the biggest part of the
body that is the skin also suffer from the sleeplessness that because the outer
layer of the brain (the crust) is responsible for intercepting and interpreting all
the information the skin has to give which is a ludicrous amount given the fact
that the skin is in continuous contact with external stimulant either the cloth or
the air or even the skin itself, this big amount of information becomes a burden
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Based on the behaviourism and stimulus approaches, three major tools to deal
with the insomnia were selected as an attempt to fix this and heal the chronic
patients:
Cognitive behaviour therapy for insomnia (CBT)
All participants received four 1-hour intervention sessions following a standard
CBT for primary insomnia protocol (Carney & Edinger, 2008). The majority of
this intervention was behaviourally oriented, with one session focused on
cognitive strategies, including constructive worry and cognitive restructuring
worksheets.
Cognitive therapy (CT)
The four CT sessions were comprised of CT components as described in Harvey
(2005) and Harvey et al. (2007). Individual insomnia formulations, based on the
cognitive model, were derived to conceptualise each participant's cognitive
maintaining factors (Harvey, 2006). Cognitive restructuring and tailored
behavioural experiments (Perlis, Aloia, & Kuhn, 2011; Ree & Harvey, 2004)
were developed to assist in reversing the cognitive maintaining factors:
unhelpful beliefs about sleep (Morin et al., 2002), worry about sleep (Tang &
Harvey, 2004), monitoring for sleep-related threats, and misperception of sleep
(Harvey & Tang, 2012).
The four MBT sessions focused on the development of mindfulness skills with
session content based on the approach described by Segal et al. (2002). In-
session meditations were included during each session, and participants were
encouraged to listen to mindfulness meditation recordings (e.g., sitting
meditation) 6 days out of 7 at times of the day that suited them. Additionally,
participants were assigned informal mindfulness tasks each week (e.g., mindful
eating and any other activity whereby attention is focused on one activity over a
period of time). The 3-Minute Breathing Space was also introduced for bringing
formal meditation practice into daily life. Participants were encouraged to carry
out the practice of 3-Minute Breathing Space three times daily at set times and
also at any other times when they felt stressed. Barriers and benefits of practice
were discussed at each session. A recurrent theme in the MBT sessions was the
awareness of present moment experience without judgment.
Two major findings arose from the current study. First, as expected, MBT was
associated with significant improvement in mindfulness measures compared to
CT. This is in contrast to the CT process measures that were significantly
improved by both CT and mindfulness treatment interventions. Second, the CT
composite process measure strongly predicted variance in insomnia severity at
posttreatment, but contrary to prediction, this result did not differ significantly
across CT and MBT. Unlike the CT process measure composite, the
mindfulness process measure composite at posttreatment did not significantly
predict change in insomnia severity. The first finding that MBT produced
change in cognitive processes is striking given that the version of MBT in the
current study did not incorporate any direct work on modifying unhelpful
thoughts, beliefs or behaviours. Others have noted that mindfulness-based
approaches raise awareness of thoughts and feelings in ways that allow a
disengagement from ruminative processes (Nolen-Hoeksema, 1991), seeing
them as ‘mental events’ and not accurate reflections of reality (Segal et al.,
2002). The current results are consistent with the notion that mindfulness-based
approaches may not only alter metacognitive processes but cognitive processes,
such as monitoring, distorted perception and cognitive content. This is in line
with research suggesting cognitive change can result from therapies other than
CT. For example, an investigation of MBT in the treatment of insomnia
suggested that dysfunctional beliefs about sleep and thought-control strategies
change with MBT (Larouche et al., 2014). Additionally, in a trial of CBT and
pharmacotherapy, Morin and colleagues (2002) found that the degree of belief
change during both treatments was predictive of treatment response, but CBT
produced more belief change than did pharmacotherapy. Further, Eidelman et
al. (2016) found that dysfunctional beliefs are modified not just by CT but also
by BT, a treatment that does not explicitly aim to modify cognitive processes
such as unhelpful beliefs. Finally, Garland, Rouleau, Campbell, Samuels, and
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study may not have had sufficient power to detect significant difference
between treatments on the cognitive process measures. There was a trend
toward CT being associated with a larger difference on the cognitive process
measure compared with MBT, but it only approached statistical significance.
Second, it may be that the CT process measures were more sensitive to change
in the current study than the MBT process measures. The CT measures were
developed for use in insomnia, whereas the MBT measures were developed for
transdiagnostic use. Third, although video recordings were reviewed during
regular supervision of the therapist by experts in each approach, no formal
fidelity treatment checks were carried out. The design of the study could also be
improved by the posttreatment measures being collected by someone
independent to the delivery of the treatment. However, the fact we collected an
objective physiological measure that showed the same response pattern to the
self-report measures suggests this was not a major flaw (see Wong et al., 2016).
In summary, there is evidence that both CT and MBT are effective treatments
for insomnia. There is also evidence that CT produces change in cognitive
process measures and that MBT brings about change in both mindfulness and
cognitive process measures. The current results support that changing the
content of unhelpful thoughts/beliefs (as in CT) or the relationship with
unhelpful thoughts/beliefs (as in MBT) results in a reduction in unhelpful
cognitive processes. Finally, the results of this study underscore the importance
of cognitive factors as mediators in insomnia, given that they were significantly
related to treatment outcome regardless of treatment condition.
5.Conclusion:
To conclude, from what has been studied and illustrated above we come to
the understanding that insomnia is a chronic decease with life threatening
effects on the patients that cause them difficulty to be receptive towards their
environment either visual or auditory or sensory in addition to the decreased of
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response time and attention span that eventually cause many patients to become
clinically unproductive which is a life ruining problem, however it is still an
approachable problem that can be tackled and fixed through behaviourism and
cognition therapy , and since the insomnia is a disorder it is more encouraging
to be delt with, since by the adjustment of certain behaviours either by stimulus
based therapy or mindfulness these behaviours fade bringing drastic change to
the life of patients that can hopefully recover completely.
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