What factors can cause insomnia?

What factors can cause insomnia?

Irshaad Ebrahim (Medical Director of The London Sleep Centre) gives expert video advice on: What is insomnia?; What happens to people who suffer insomnia, over time?; How many people suffer from insomnia? and more...

Insomnia can be classified as either primary or secondary. Primary insomnia refers to insomnia that has no identifiable medical cause. In other words, life stress, whether its minor or major. Any series of events made to set off one bad night, which would then result in a series of bad nights, and then maybe months and even years of bad nights because one establishes a dysfunctional pattern of sleeping. That is called primary insomnia. Secondary insomnia, as its name implies, is secondary to something else. It may be a medical condition such as a heart condition or a vascular condition or an inflammatory condition such as arthritis that could be affecting your sleep at night. There could be another sleep disorder for example, sleep apnea, where ones's breathing stops during sleep that may cause insomnia.