Scientists from the Netherlands Institute of Neurobiology believe that there are five different types of insomnia that should be treated differently.
The study involved 4.3 thousand people. All of them were surveyed about sleep habits, about their state of health, about taking common sleeping pills and using other methods of dealing with insomnia, and were also examined by electroencephalography. In 2.2 thousand of them insomnia was detected, and 2.1 thousand people entered the control group. As a result, researchers identified 5 groups of people suffering from insomnia: 1 group. Pronounced distressor personality type, for example, people with neuroticism and depression. 2 group. Moderately distressor, but sensitive (sensitive) to reward, that is, responding to positive emotions. 3 group.
Moderately distressor and sensitive. 4 group. Weakly distressor with high reactivity, that is, insomnia largely depends on the environment and life circumstances. 5 group. Weakly distressor with low reactivity. Participants with insomnia from all groups did not differ from each other in how difficult it was for them to fall asleep or wake up in the morning. But people from the first group are more often prone to nightmares and bouts of depression. In the second group, depression occurs 3 times less frequently than in the third.
At the same time, benzodiazepines effectively act on people with insomnia from the second and fourth groups, but cognitive-behavioral therapy brings real benefits only to people from the second group. After 5 years, more than 200 project participants who suffered from insomnia were re-examined. It turned out that for the most part they continue to remain in the same subgroups, that is, the type of insomnia is fixed at the level of the brain. Researchers believe that their classification will allow you to prescribe an individual, and therefore more effective treatment of insomnia.