How can I get rid of my insomnia by taking modafinil 200mg?

[olivialane01]

Insomnia is a sleep disorder in which you have trouble falling and/or staying asleep. The condition can be short-term (acute) or can last a long time (chronic). It may also come and go. Acute insomnia lasts from 1 night to a few weeks.

[LisaSnow]

What do you take modafinil for?

[FreddieFaulenze in reply to LisaSnow]

I'd also like to know since modafinil is used to keep people awake.

[kaliska0 in reply to LisaSnow]

DSPS-delayed sleep phase syndrome is one example. It's a circadian rhythm disorder. The circadian rhythm is your day to night schedule the body naturally follows. For some their body doesn't match sunrise and sunset properly. Modafinil is used to help wake up at the right time and trigger alerting substances that would normally rise in the morning to keep you alert but fail to in people with disorders like DSPS. Since these substances go up sooner with modafinil and you are alert longer the body also triggers sleep sooner. Otherwise these people can sleep a normal quantity and quality but often live their lives on approximately a 4hr shift from the average person. They frequently miss work or school as they develop sleep deprivation from their body completely lacking the signals to sleep until around 4 hrs later than they need to. Eventually they cannot force themselves out of bed in the morning and often sleep until late afternoon to recover from the past week of trying. Modafinil can be a magic pill for those people.

Many substances that make you alert also contribute to things that make you sleepy later. Such as serotonin is created in response to sunlight and then converted to melatonin when there is a lack of sunlight. ATP is energy your cells create, more so when active than when inactive, and as the energy is used up by being alert and moving around it leaves behind adenosine. Adenosine is the main thing caffeine blocks so you feel more alert. You have to first create the alerting substance to create the sedating or sleep triggering one from it. That's one way your body knows when it's time to rest.

Another signal to your body is merely the drop or rise of hormones or neurotransmitters that happens after you've been fully awake or asleep for a long enough period of time. Cortisol rises highest in the morning, fluctuates some during the day often in response to meals, and drops the most in the evening to help you be active when you need to and rest when you don't. It is one of the most common things responsible for people who wake up in the middle of the night because while it normally follows a day/night pattern if you have a consistent and healthy lifestyle; it can also rise quickly at any time to keep you alert while you fulfill a need like hunger or until you feel you have completed all necessary tasks for the day. Histamines and reproductive hormones also rise in the morning to make you more alert and drop in the evening. Dopamine builds over night to signal wakefulness and then slowly depletes over the day until it gets low enough it switches to triggering calming receptors instead of alerting ones. Except in cases of ADHD, parkinsons, and other neurological disorders where either dopamine levels or pathways and receptors do not work correctly.

These things especially happen in response to activity and food so merely having your eyes open but laying in bed too sleepy to get up or skipping breakfast because you are too tired before going to work/school will reduce how early these substances rise and how soon they drop or convert to other substances later.

What you do during the day is just as important for how well you sleep at night. Too many people only concentrate on evening activities or sedating substances. They don't make use of their circadian rhythm and fail to encourage the body to create a much broader group of triggers for sleep by helping it to also be alert and active at the right times. That's why exercise (creates ATP and then uses it to make sleep inducing adenosine) and morning sunlight or daylight therapy lamps (increases serotonin and dopamine) are some of the first suggestions for improving sleep before resorting to adding sedating meds or supplements. More extreme supplements or medications that encourage wakefulness, activity, and energy production during the day are sometimes beneficial when you have genetics or health disorders interfering with your ability to be active early enough to maintain an ideal circadian rhythm during the day as well as at night.