The Nuance
The Best Remedy for Insomnia Is the One You Haven’t Tried
Most people do exactly the wrong thing during a bout of sleepless nights
Stress and worry are major insomnia triggers, and so it’s hardly a surprise that the pandemic has set off a wave of lost sleep. Earlier this year, research in the journal Sleep Medicine found that the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 caused a 37% jump in the incidence of clinical insomnia.
Even before the pandemic, insomnia was commonplace. Each year, about one in four adults develops acute insomnia, which is defined as a problem falling asleep or staying asleep a few nights a week for a period of at least two weeks. That’s according to a 2020 study in the journal Sleep.
Fortunately, that study found that most people — roughly 75% — recover from these periods of short-term insomnia. But for others, the problem persists for months or years. “A bad night of sleep can be a one-and-done, it can be a couple of nights for a couple of weeks, or it can turn into a chronic problem,” says Michael Perlis, PhD, first author of the Sleep study and director of the Behavioral Sleep Medicine Program at the University of Pennsylvania.
