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Acute Insomnia: Knowing Its Signs & Symptoms
(And Its Differences From Chronic Insomnia)

What if you just let your insomnia take the best of you? What if you don’t know about
the symptoms of insomnia at all? You’d lay around in bed all night, thinking that what
you’re experiencing is just normal. And when you finally get to fall asleep, you wake up
in the middle of the night for no reason at all. Before you know it, the sun has already
risen and you’re in a new day of no sleep again.

The importance of diagnosing acute insomnia

Like with any other disease, diagnosing acute insomnia can lead to early its resolution.
If you are able to recognize the symptoms of acute insomnia, you can block its possible
transition into chronic insomnia. Acute insomnia is usually triggered by environmental
factors that you are more likely to determine early on the course of the sleeping disor-
der. Think of it this way, you can easily recognize the possible causes of your insomnia
if you have been exposed to them just recently. But if you are already suffering from it
chronically, finding the exact cause of the disorder can be daunting.

The signs that you have acute insomnia

In this blog post, we would highlight the basic signs and symptoms of acute insomnia.
We first start with the signs, which are considered as the objective characteristics of any
disorder. Signs can be seen by people around you, more so by medical professionals.
Of course, you can also feel the existence of some signs but it can be hard to do so es-
pecially with your sleep-deprived state.

1.You have constant sleep disruptions for a month or less

This is an important sign of acute insomnia. If you have difficulty falling asleep or main-
taining sleep for around a month or less, then that is considered as acute insomnia.
Those who wake up in the middle of the night and find it hard to sleep again are also
included here. Similarly, those who wake up too early in the morning for no reason are
considered as insomniacs. Remember that your sleep deprivation should be occurring
for a few days, to a few weeks and up to a month to be considered as acute.

2. People around you notice that you are less productive

If you work in a company setting, you might find statements that you seem less focused
or less productive. If you are a stay-at-home parent, you might find your children or
loved ones commenting that your concentration seems to be off lately. These are also
clear signs that you might be suffering from sleep deprivation. Without proper sleep,
your brain isn’t able to recover from the stresses you encountered during the previous
days. This would show up in your activities during the succeeding days, lack of concen-
tration and less productivity are the consequences.

3. You sleep during unlikely situations during the day

While riding the public bus to work, you suddenly doze off and miss your stop. During
mass, you can’t help but sleep. Or if you are watching a movie with your special some-
one, you miss some parts because you suddenly slept. These are clear signs of sleep
deprivation too especially if you don’t usually sleep in these situations. People around
you would take notice of your unusual sleepiness and might mock you for it.

4. Your loved ones complain about your sudden mood changes

Yet another clear sign of sleep deprivation is sudden mood changes. The mood
changes are usually negative, ranging from irritability, to sadness, to anger and more. A
usually kind and well-mannered person can have these negative range of emotions
along with acute insomnia. These mood changes are brought about by the sleepless-
ness and stimulation of the part of the brain that controls negative emotions.

The symptoms that you have acute insomnia

In contrast, symptoms are subjective characteristics of a disease. Symptoms are usually

felt or experienced by the individual. It is not readily seen by another person, unless he
pays attention or asks the insomniac about how he or she is feeling. Even with sleep
deprivation, the insomniac might find it hard to deny these symptoms because they mer-
it attention.

1.You have frequent headaches

Headaches and insomnia are co-occurring symptoms. Several studies, like this one,
have already proven their bi-directional relationship. Because of this, insomnia itself can
precede a headache or a headache can precede insomnia. For example, with the fre-
quent sleep deprivation, the sufferer might experience headaches during the day. Or it
can go the other way around, with a lingering headache, the person might experience
difficulty falling asleep or maintaining sleep. If you find yourself in any of these situa-
tions, you might already be suffering from acute insomnia.

2. You feel tired, sleepy or fatigued during the day

Even acute insomniacs suffer from that feeling of tiredness, sleepiness or fatigue. With
the transient or short-term sleep deprivation, your body weakens and it shows up during
day time. In this study, the researchers did an interesting test between the insomniac
group and a control group of laboratory-controlled sleep deprived individuals. They
measured symptoms such as vigor, estimation of sleep deprivation and personality dis-
turbances. The result is that those with innate insomnia scored higher in all aspects,
leading to a conclusion that these individuals’ symptoms are not necessarily caused by
the insomnia. But perhaps by hyper-aroused state and misperceptions of the insomni-
acs themselves.

3. Simple tasks are hard to accomplish

You might notice that you have a harder time completing simple tasks recently. Again,
with insufficient sleep, your brain doesn’t get the recovery it needs. That’s why even
simple tasks can be harder to accomplish and more so, the complicated tasks. In this
study, researchers investigated on the cognitive abilities of sleep-deprived individuals
and those who have normal sleep. There was a significant difference between the cog-
nitive abilities of both groups, with the sleep-deprived individuals performing with less
accuracy on many tasks.

4. You feel anxious or stressed before sleeping

Stressful events relating to work or your relationships can lead to insomnia as well. Take
a look at this study, wherein the relationship between anxiety and stress has been
linked to sleep disturbances. As the researchers have postulated, the presence of a
stressful event can lead to sleep disturbances even months after its onset. In another
study, researchers used personal scales or surveys to measure the perceived stress of
insomniacs and healthy sleepers. The result was also significant, with those suffering
from insomnia rating their perceived stresses higher as compared to those with healthy
sleep.

How prevalent is acute insomnia?

The main issue with acute insomnia is that it is even lesser diagnosed than chronic in-
somnia. The reason is perhaps more sufferers think that acute insomnia doesn’t warrant
any intervention as it can go away on its own. This is true but if the individual has
adapted badly to the sleeping pattern he has developed acutely, it can transition into
chronic insomnia. The prevalence of acute insomnia has been studied by Ellis and his
colleagues in 2012.

In their study, they took samples from both the UK and the US. It was found that 7.9% of
the 1,095 UK participants suffers from acute insomnia. For the US sample size of 2,861,
it was found that 9.5% of the number suffers from acute insomnia. Three types of acute
insomnia were determined, with recurrent acute insomnia having the highest occurrence
at 3.8%. From this study alone, the researchers were able to determine and prove that
acute insomnia is a prevalent condition in various regions of the world.

The prognosis for acute insomnia

The good news is that acute insomnia has a better prognosis than chronic insomnia.
You just need to get to the primary cause of the condition and treating it is not unlikely.
For example, if you find that stresses at work is causing you your sleep, you can find
another work opportunity or communicate with the appropriate people to stop the main
root of your problem. As mentioned above, you can easily find the exact source of your
issue since the problem occurred just recently and not years ago.

There was a recent study done by Ellis again and with some colleagues. They investi-
gated on the effectiveness of single-shot cognitive behavioral therapy for acute insom-
niacs. The result was that even just one session of cognitive behavioral therapy was
able to alleviate the acute insomniacs of their symptoms. In fact, around 73% of the par-
ticipants found the therapy effective for their sleeping disorder.

The signs and symptoms of acute insomnia…

Differ slightly from chronic insomnia or extreme insomnia. They have their similarities
when it comes to the experiences of the individual himself. But the onset and duration of
acute insomnia differs greatly from chronic insomnia. The severity of the cognitive im-
pairments, sleep disturbances and mood changes differ for both subtypes as well. So if
you want to be able to treat your insomnia at its first onset, then make sure you recog-
nize the signs and symptoms above.

If you enjoyed this blog post, comment below or share it to your friends. Have we
missed some other signs and symptoms of acute insomnia? You can share them below
so we can all learn from them.