Types Of Insomnia

Definition of insomnia – Insomnia is defined as a distressing and persistent difficulty with falling asleep, (sleep-onset insomnia), difficulty staying asleep, including waking up too early (sleep-maintenance insomnia) and poor quality fragmented sleep. In short, if you are taking longer than 30 minutes to get to sleep, more than three times a week for over a month, then you have insomnia.

Insomnia can be transient (lasting up to a week often linked to changes in daily routine or a particular event), short term (lasting up to a few months and can be triggered by a stressful event) or it can be chronic whereby the quality or amount of sleep is reduced and lasts more than a few months. ​Sometimes the cause is primary and can be to do with the body’s internal sleep clock or hormonal changes. It can be idiopathic with the cause not being identified or it can simply be a misconception of how much sleep you are actually getting, called pseudo insomnia. There can also be secondary insomnia whereby sleep is affected by something such as pain or an underlying medical condition.