The problem of not being able to sleep at night or going through disturbed sleep patterns is called insomnia. By the time you are in your 60s, your body clock begins to run too fast. In fact, you suffer from early morning insomnia chiefly because your body clock produces melatonin and other sleep hormones too early in the evening and cannot go through a full cycle.

The symptoms of early morning insomnia include the patient falling asleep as usual, but waking up in the early hours of the morning and finding it difficult to go back to sleep. This is common among old people and is often associated with depression, anxiety, self-reproach, and self-punitive thinking.

Diagnosis:

The cause of early morning insomnia should be evaluated according to one’s sleep pattern, use of drugs, degree of psychological stress and amount of physical activity. If you haven’t slept regularly, then a cause would be sleep apnea syndrome, but it early morning insomnia could also be due to an irregular sleep schedule, anxiety or emotional disturbance.

Treatment:

By discussing the cause of anxiety that the patient suffers, his distress and sleeplessness can diminish. Such patients should be reassured that the problem will go away, and instructed to relax and encouraged to exercise, and avoid naps through the day. A glass of warm milk at bedtime will help them sleep better. If early morning insomnia is due to depression, a hypnotic drug could be given temporarily.

Hypnotics:

These are drugs given primarily to bring on sleep among the sleepless. But you should guard against taking an overdose or getting habituated to it lest you feel drowsy and lethargic. You might have skin eruptions and GI disturbances such as nausea and vomiting or you may feel restless, excited or are delirious.

Light therapy:

Patients of early morning insomnia should be exposed to light therapy on two consecutive nights to see a marked change in their sleep patterns. If this is continued over a four-week period, they show a greater fall in the time they stay awake after falling asleep and a greater sleep time than before.

They also show a greater improvement in daytime functioning, with fewer bouts of depression. Even after they are completely treated of this problem, it is recommended that such patients undergo occasional treatments of bright-light therapy.

Sleep diary:

Maintain a daily record of your sleep experiences that include the hours you slept, how quickly you fell off to sleep, whether light or heavy sleep, how many times you woke in the night, your behaviour in the daytime, your moods, etc.

Stimulus control techniques:

This technique involves learning to use the bedroom only for a night’s sleep. So, you are expected to go to bed when you are tired and ready for sleep and leave the bedroom when you are no longer sleepy. You must also learn to wake up at the same time each day, whether on weekends or vacation, despite the number of hours of sleep you’ve had.

Early morning insomnia is perfectly curable and apart from bright light therapy, there are other effective therapies too. They are as safe and reliable as bright light therapy and you can resort to them with full confidence.