Many causes of insomnia are debated and highlighted in many types of articles, but if you ask yourself the question Why can’t I sleep? more often than you’d like, we try to show you other types of reasons you may not have thought of before.

The most common reasons for insomnia

But we start with the most common reasons why insomnia may be part of your nights, reasons that are not to be ignored but which you may have experienced or been told:

  1. Stress
  2. Overeating in the evening
  3. Blue light before sleep (digital screens)
  4. Sleep disorders (sleep apnea, restless legs syndrome)
  5. Various medications (certain antidepressants, diet pills, blood pressure medication)
  6. The busy and long working hours
  7. Lack of bedtime routine
  8. Mental health disorders (depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder)
  9. Physical ailments (if you suffer from chronic illnesses, heart disease or other degenerative diseases, they can affect your sleep)
  10. Nicotine and alcohol

Now that these have been mentioned, you may feel that none of the above do not sufficiently describe the problem you are having, and it’s worth noting that lack of sleep and quality sleep can be a cumulative context between one or more of the reasons.

10 other reasons for lack of sleep

However, we thought we’d tell you about 10 other, less-discussed reasons why you can’t sleep at night or don’t feel sleepy.

  1. The physical body and the mental side are not aligned – Your schedule may include many activities but you may be tired mentally rather than physically. This mental fatigue makes you think that you should be able to sleep well, but physically, your body may need exercise. If you haven’t had time to exercise during the day, we don’t recommend sports before sleep. But a pillow beating or a massage and a bit of muscle stretching can help your body get into the same tired state.
  2. Nervous system is not calm – An alert heart rate during the day and a nervous system that is not calmed before sleep (i.e. sits worrying, thinking about tomorrow, alert) can lead to an equally high heart rate during the night. This will not allow the body to rest and regenerate by sleeping little or poorly. As a rule, if your heartbeat remains elevated during the night you wake up and feel like you haven’t slept.
  3. Your bedroom is too cluttered – Whether we’re talking about the number of things in your bedroom, or the number of colors, pictures, discarded clothes, too much furniture, your bedroom should be a sanctuary. It’s the most intimate and the main place where you spend ⅓ of your life and recharge. Just as you buy a fast charger for your phone, so is your bedroom. It’s best to keep it as clean, less dense and not cluttered at all.
  4. Wall color – Beige is not a soothing color for everyone. Nor is light blue. Colors are personal and come with their own emotions. It’s very important that the walls in your bedroom are in a color that doesn’t arouse negative emotions on any level. How can you tell? Well, if when you walk into your bedroom something about the walls is always nagging at you but you don’t know what it is, you might not like the color. Or white is too dry for you.
  5. Lots of unspoken thoughts and words – If you’ve had a day with little socializing or communication time with loved ones, you may have a lot of unspoken thoughts and words. The easiest thing to do in this situation is to do a kind of journaling before going to sleep, where what’s on your mind, put it down on paper and let your mind go blank. The brain enters a totally different state after it has clarified something on paper.
  6. The sheets – if your sheets are not absolutely relaxing tactilely, or even coloristically, it is very likely to affect the quality of your sleep and your ability to get into a relaxed state. If you also sweat or overheat during the night, this will lead to even poorer quality. It’s best to have bedding made from natural materials such as linen, cotton, hemp, so that you can be calm and thermally regulated during the night. Linen is best in this respect.
  7. Sexual energy – a lack of sexual energy discharge for a longer period of time can make sleeping difficult. There are several possible remedies here, but it’s important to be aware if it’s affecting you and to be able to solve the problem ☺
  8. Nutrition – Yes it matters not to eat right before going to bed. But it also matters what you ate during the day. Nutrition is part of the balance of the whole system and it’s a cog that, if left unpunctured, ends up spinning off in unexpected places. Eat well and home cooked.
  9. Smell – If somehow during the day or at home, you have an episode where an odor triggers an unpleasant memory, your body may anchor itself in that moment and become tense, finding it hard to take it out of context. It’s worth mentioning that body memory is incredible and can be a cause of sleep deprivation if something brings up a less than pleasant moment. It’s good to freshen up the house by airing out, changing detergents and textile sprays.
  10. Using your bed to work – We make strong associations, so if you use your bed to work on your laptop or eat in it, it may no longer be the place for your body and brain to rest. You change the association, you change the results.

We hope we’ve been helpful. What we firmly believe, however, is that you are your own most reliable helper. What to do if you can’t sleep at night is first and foremost to be aware of your body and the times of day. And understand what’s good for you and what’s bad for you.

And a sensational remedy for sleep, as it calms the nervous system, is to give thanks for 3 things that day. Enjoy them, feel lucky. And done every day, this helps you feel better about yourself and sleep better with yourself.

We think you know that the most common thing that happens when you don’t sleep at night is that you end up more nervous and out of balance than usual. In the long run this also means less resilience, weaker immunity and accelerated ageing.

Try one remedy at a time, choose what works for you and you’ll turn Can’t sleep at night into Can’t wait to sleep.

Additional sources:

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/9155https://www.sleepfoundation.org/insomnia

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