Stress induced insomnia is characterized by persistent difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep despite the opportunity. Insomnia is a symptom, not a stand-alone diagnosis or a disease. It is typically followed by functional impairment while awake.

Stress can cause insomnia by constant stimulation of the adrenal gland through the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis causing massive amounts of adrenalin and cortisol to be released on a consistent basis. This is the base cause of stress induced insomnia.

Many people with insomnia rely on sleeping tablets and other sedatives to get rest. These medications also have a number of side effects such as day-time fatigue, motor vehicle crashes, cognitive impairments and falls and fractures. These medications do not treat the reason for the insomnia (AKA: the root cause)

The root cause of insomnia is imbalances in the brain’s neurotransmitter (NT) system. Neurotransmitters generally fall into two main categories. Excitatory NT’s like adrenalin that energize the body and creates focus and Inhibitory NT’s like serotonin that calm, relax and slow down the body as well as induce sleep. Too little inhibitory and/or too much excitatory neurotransmitters will not allow a person to sleep. Further, if the stress hormone, cortisol, is too high at night, you won’t sleep.

At Integrative Family Healthcare we perform neurotransmitter and stress hormone assessments to objectively identify the imbalances. Our treatment corrects the root causes of stress induced insomnia using natural substances like calming herbs to reduce adrenal stress and amino acids to naturally build the inhibitory NT’s.