What causes insomnia? - Dan Kwartler

What keeps you up at night? Pondering deep questions? Excitement about a big trip? Stress about unfinished work? What if the very thing keeping you awake was stress about losing sleep? This seemingly unsolvable loop is at the heart of insomnia, the world’s most common sleep disorder. So what is insomnia? And is there any way to break the cycle? Dan Kwartler details the science of insomnia.

Lesson by Dan Kwartler, animation by Sharon Colman.

Thank you so much to our patrons for your support! Without you this video would not be possible! Mehmet Sencer KARADAYI, Christian Kurch, SungGyeong Bae, Luis Felipe Ruiz Langenscheidt, Joe Huang, Rohan Gupta, Senjo Limbu, Martin Lau, Robson Martinho, Jason Garcia, Cailin Ramsey, Aaron Henson, John Saveland, Nicolle Fieldsend-Roxborough, Venkat Venkatakrishnan, Sandy Nasser, CG Nobles, QIUJING L BU, Yoga Trapeze Wanderlust, Jaron Blackburn, Alejandro Cachoua, Thomas Mungavan, Elena Crescia, Edla Paniguel, Sarah Lundegaard, Anna-Pitschna Kunz, Tim Armstrong, Erika Blanquez, Ricki Daniel Marbun, zjweele13, Judith Benavides, Ross Henriques, Ken, Caitlin de Falco, Scheherazade Kelii, Errys, James Bruening, Michael Braun-Boghos, Ricardo Diaz, Kack-Kyun Kim, Artem Minyaylov, Alexandrina Danifeld, Danny Romard, Yujing Jiang, Stina Boberg, Mariana Ortega, Anthony Wiggins, Hoai Nam Tran, Joe Sims, and David Petrovič.

[jekaaai]

It's just so scary being unable to sleep. It's even more disturbing being unable to sleep while panicking about work/school next day...

[sleepinglucidnow]

Morning: Want to sleep
All day: Dying to sleep. SO tired
Night: Can't sleep

[mavahenderson]

My journey to recovery was aided by the therapeutic potential of mushroom

[SocksThePup]

I used to have extreme insomnia from 2020 to 2022. Every night I would just lay awake praying for sleep to come and then be absolutely defeated the next day at school. One day in 2022 shortly after moving to another house it suddenly went away. I hope I never have to go through that again and I hope everyone whose dealing with this finds relief soon
Edit: Sadly over the course of a couple weeks my insomnia has come back and it’s worse than ever. I haven’t slept for a week now

[salokin]

Uh who else is watching this while trying to sleep?

[sunflowerr]

me in school: *tries not to fall asleep but falls asleep*
me in bed: *tries to fall asleep but can't*
UGH it's so annoying!

[anthonysperato]

the worst is when you can’t sleep so then you stress about it, which only causes you to stress more and sleep less

[ViannaInara]

I hope everyone reading this gets the peace they need to continue on.

[keyb]

11 pm: calm, its just 11
3am: oh no, I can't sleep! *panic

[arthurtfm]

It's even worse when your family just doesn't get it and they blame you.

[sumedh]

although not being able to sleep doesn't sound too bad, it is extremely painful when you have to perform with less sleep like during exams. Having gone through this ordeal, I wish nothing but the best for you and stay hard you will get through this.

[ruantristancarlinsky]

My Mom suffers from this and it really hurts to know that she can't rest given how hard she works for us. I really wish there was a cure for this man.😕

[--Fullsun]

The worst thing is staying up all night just staring into nothingness because you don’t know what to do anymore but just lay there and stare...

[doobiscoopi]

Im so jealous of the people who fall asleep within 5mins while i have to fall asleep in 4 hours

[NicoleCtirad]

I could remember several years ago, I had insomnia. I suffered severe depression and mental disorder. Was actually diagnosed with ADHD. Not until my son recommended me to psilocybin mushrooms treatment. Psilocybin treatment saved my life honestly. 6 years totally clean. Never thought I would be saying this about mushrooms.

[Lorcan-tsdx]

I just feel like im lying in bed for a few hours with my eyes closed but not actually sleeping

[sleepyysleep]

“What causes insomnia?”


Me, watching this at 2am: *_”Well, well, well then, let’s find out”_*

[Peachy_Skyes]

I used to be an insomniac (not diagnosed) but I did get scared of not falling asleep, and it I’ve grown better. When I can’t fall asleep, I recognize that it’s okay when this happens and I shouldn’t be scared and get caused in this endless loop.

[skrrratashauwu]

I always been sleeping well in my past 23 years, and now, not sure what’s happening, unable to have quality sleep for almost 2 weeks. There’s always this voice in my mind keep talking for whole night, and the vivid dream I’m experiencing every single night. I didn’t aware how sleep quality is so important previously, I started to feel myself unable to focus on a task, suddenly space out, hard to focus while driving, and even watching this video I have to keep repeat cuz cannot focus. It’s started getting hard for me to just do my daily activities.

Currently trying different ways to put me on sleep

[antarcticpenguin]

im a bit of an insomniac because of cringy memories, undone work, anxiety about grades, and relation to friends and families, whenever i would wake up, i definitely feel lethargic but it does go away after eating or taking a shower.