Insomnia Support Group
Insomnia is a symptom, rather than a disease, and is characterized by inadequate quantity or quality of sleep. People with insomnia complain of difficulty falling or staying asleep, which results in significant impairment of daytime functioning. Insomnia is categorized as transient (shorter than one week), short-term (one to three weeks) or chronic (longer than three...
I suffer sleep problems on alternate days. I don't know what's going wrong with me. But I am worrying should I go for the doctor?
Chronic insomnia, which lasts longer than a month is less common, but still many people experience this.
And yes if longer than a month and you're concerned, a doc should be your first step to either treat or rule out an underlying medical condition causing it. If none, ask your doc about using a CBT sleep training program, which is the gold standard for nonmedical or primary insomnia.
"07" covered CBT well in their response. I have no experience in CBT so I cannot comment other than to agree that non-chemical methods are the best if you can achieve one.
The answers to what you posed in your title are "yes and yes". If you read any medical information the past many months there is almost 100% agreement that good sleep is absolutely necessary for good health, Maybe the most impotant thing to helping your body get and keep healthy.
If your insomnia has been an on-going problem vs. just started, may be of interest. Many times "just started" is related to something new in your life that is causing you to not sleep.
If this has been going on for months, I would definely recommend a doctor, especially a trained sleep doctor. Most other doctors will have little in their medical box to offer other than sleep medications of many types. Amitriptyline (technically, not a sleep medication at all) has always worked well for me and it is taken at a very low dose so that most people have no side effects at all and can easily be discontinued it if the sleep causing issues are resolved. I would caution you to avoid other sleep medications or another popular one; Xanax (generic name: alprazolam). If you start down this road you may never get off. Xanax and its cousins are very difficult to stop if taken for long periods. Although Xanax is commonly prescribed for sleep, one thing that many doctors will not tell you, or likely not even know, is that Xanx totally eliminates "deep" sleep. It does not affect REM sleep much if at all, but deep sleep will be a thing of the past.
Lack of sleep is related, or at least associated with, to many medical problems. You can easily "search" and find many. In any case, it is bad for an adult not to fet 7-9 hours (no more, no less) of sleep every night.
At this point I would recommend that you make sure that you are following all sleep best practices, many of which will kill sleep in its tracks. Including; having a TV or other entertainment devices in the bedroom. Keep the bedroom cool to cold (60-65 degrees), and keep your bedroom very dark or wear a sleep mask. A white, or better, a pink noise generator can be very helpful to many to help mask any disrupting noises.
There are several other best sleep practices which again, are easily found on the Net. Good luck trying to find a solution to your problem, it can be vry difficult to over come insomnia.