Dr. Michael Grandner

Yeah, no, thanks for having me.

Right.

That's a great question.

The way I think about it is that there's really two kinds of insomnia.

I call it sort of insomnia with a lowercase I and insomnia with a capital I.

Think of it, it's kind of like depression too, where it's a word.

It's a word that we use to mean a lot of different things, but in a clinical context, it means something specific.

So a lot of people will say, I have trouble sleeping and I have insomnia, but is this an insomnia disorder?

Is that how we would call it?

We'd call it an insomnia disorder.

And the way to tell the difference is how they're presenting.

So an insomnia disorder is defined as a persistent difficulty initiating or maintaining sleep or waking up too early.

So it can happen anywhere in the night.

The difficulty has to be there.

It has to occur at least three nights per week.

It has to have gone on for at least three months to be considered a chronic insomnia.

It has to cause some sort of daytime functioning problem.

Could be almost anything, but it's got to cause problems.

You have to give yourself adequate opportunity to sleep.

So just sleep depriving yourself isn't insomnia.