Anyone who has had a rough night of sleep knows that sleep can play a significant role in how you feel on a given day. But for those who deal with insomnia, getting a good night's sleep can feel like an impossibility. But what is it about sleep that affects our body's ability to function so much?
Why is Sleep so Important?
Sleep is vital to maintaining good health. It is essential to every process in the body and allows your body to function physically and mentally as it should. Sleep helps your immune system, digestive system, metabolism, mental health, mood, and so much more. In children sleep is even more critical in that it helps them develop mentally and physically. Poor sleep in children has been associated with difficult behavioral issues, difficulty learning and retaining information, and even poor eating patterns.
While your body sleeps, your brain gets a chance to process and perform healthy brain functions like storing new information in long-term memory, clearing the cortisol that has built up from the day's activities, and recharging mentally so that you can think clearly tomorrow and maintain good mental health. Physically our bodies get a chance to rest and recover from a day of activity so that we are ready to work, exercise, and play the next day.
Sleep helps our brain function properly, it helps our emotional and mental state stay healthy, it reduces our risk of disease, and so much more. And poor sleep and sleep deprivation have been associated with a whole host of issues such as fatigue, higher levels of stress, anxiety, depression, lower immune system, weight gain, and behavioral issues, and sleep deprivation can even increase your risk of having a car accident.
What is Insomnia?
Insomnia is defined as a sleep disorder where it is difficult to fall asleep, stay asleep, or get back to sleep. This can then make you feel groggy and sap your energy level, as well as lead to poor health, work performance, and quality of life. This lack of quality sleep at night can also then cause daytime fatigue. Those with trouble falling asleep often will find their body's ability to function the next day is decreased, and their low energy levels can lead to other health issues. Insomniacs may try to get more sleep, but if their body still does not get a chance to have true restorative sleep, their issue will remain the same.
Chronic insomnia can also lead to a weakened immune system, as the poor quality of sleep means that the body never gets a chance to recover.
Common causes of insomnia can be stress, eating too late in the evening, drinking too much caffeine, a poor work schedule, and poor sleep habits, but can also be associated with medical conditions or the use of certain drugs. Mental health can also contribute to insomnia, anxiety, PTSD, and Depression can also have a side effect of insomnia.
Other Sleep Disorders
Sleep apnea can also be a cause of insomnia. Sleep apnea is a condition where during sleep the body repeatedly stops breathing. This back-and-forth of loss of oxygen and rapid restart of breathing can mean that the body never enters true restful sleep, and as such, even a person who got an adequate number of hours of sleep can still feel incredibly tired and fatigued the next morning.
How Does Pain Contribute to Poor Sleep?
Another cause of poor sleep can be bodily pain. When the body is in pain, it can lead to difficulty falling asleep; chronic pain can make it impossible. Poor alignment in the spine can lead to issues with neck pain or back pain which can lead to difficulty feeling comfortable and finding a good sleeping position. Long-term poor posture can also contribute to tension and discomfort in the muscles throughout the whole musculoskeletal system.
How does the nervous system contribute to sleep?
Another possible cause of poor sleep is nervous system dysregulation. There are two sides to the nervous system, the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. The sympathetic nervous system controls the fight or flight response of the body, helping the body protect itself and be able to get away from danger. Sympathetic activation will cause the body to increase the heart rate, decrease the motility of the digestive tract, constrict blood vessels, raise blood pressure, and prepare the body to be on high alert. The parasympathetic nervous system is the opposing side. If Sympathetic is "fight or flight", parasympathetic is "rest and digest". It relaxes your body and increases your ability to digest food, it reduces the amount of work your lungs do during times of rest, and lowers your heart rate. The parasympathetic side of the nervous system is important for helping reduce overall tension in the body and helping attain good sleep.
However, sometimes people can get trapped in fight or flight, and this increased sympathetic activation can lead to insomnia as the body is never truly able to rest.
How can Chiropractic care help overcome sleep disorders?
This is where a chiropractor can help. People can try to relieve stress and pain in the body in many ways, but one of the most effective methods of finding the root cause of pain is chiropractic care. Spinal misalignments can be one of the primary root causes of pain in the body, and chiropractic manipulation helps to correct misalignments that are holding the body in pain. Often patients will report that even after one adjustment they experienced better sleep.
Chiropractic adjustments can also help activate the parasympathetic side of the nervous system and help balance communication through the body, allowing the body to switch through the sides of the nervous system as it needs to as opposed to being stuck in one or the other. This better communication can help increase your sleep quality and better your sleep patterns, helping you fall asleep and stay asleep better.
How else can chiropractic treatment help me?
There are so many other ways that chiropractic care can help the functioning of the whole body. Explore our other blog posts to see other examples, and call today to schedule your chiropractic evaluation and see what chiropractic medicine can do to make your life better!