Insomnia is considered by many people as an inevitable disease that they cannot cope with, since many people in their family also suffer from it. But the fact that several members of a family suffer from insomnia problems does not make it a hereditary disorder. Insomnia is not inherited, sleep habits are inherited.
Family insomnia
- If insomnia has often been linked to a hereditary or genetic problem, it is because of the frequency with which it appears in the same family. Your father slept badly, your mother had trouble falling asleep and then you consider it normal that you also have sleep problems. Maybe your father slept badly because he worked shifts and couldn’t regulate his circadian clock. From him. Maybe your mother couldn’t sleep because of your father’s snoring. And maybe you have insomnia because right now you have a million worries. But it has nothing to do with genetic inheritance.
- Once the cases of insomnia caused by a physical problem have been ruled out, which can then be hereditary, and the rarer cases of lethal family insomnia, which are transmitted from generation to generation, sleeping problems are due to bad sleep habits. Some sleep habits that can become your inheritance of insomnia.
- If insomnia is a kind of tradition in your family, it may be that you do not have proper sleep hygiene. If it is a tradition to eat hearty dishes for dinner, if you like to spend late hours watching TV and if you take naps indiscriminately, it is possible that these behaviors are imitated from childhood. Sleeping well is an exercise in perseverance and regularity that may not fit into your family’s daily habits.
How to solve insomnia in the family
- In no case should you accept insomnia problems as an inevitable family illness. Surely by now you are well aware of the need to sleep well to ensure a good quality of life, so it is time to banish old sleep habits and replace them with new ones that allow you to sleep a restful sleep.
- Establish regular times for going to bed and getting up, as well as daily routines that get you to bed in as relaxed a state as possible. Turn off the television early, reduce the intensity of the light so as not to harm the production of melatonin and forget about family disputes after dinner so as not to go to bed with tension or a bad mood.
- Scrupulously following sleep hygiene is very important, especially if you have children, because this way they can acquire sleep habits from a young age that keep them protected from insomnia. But remember that it is of little use to tell a child what to do if he does not see the example in his parents.
