 Do you have a hard time falling or staying asleep? Are you waking up feeling unrefreshed despite having the chance to sleep adequately? Is it having a toll on your daily tasks? Insomnia sufferers will feel irritable, unenergized with constant headaches and difficulties staying focused and remembering things. Insomnia will affect your quality of life, making it a constant struggle. But what is insomnia? It's the perception or complaint of inadequate or poor quality sleep due to a number of factors such as difficulty falling asleep, waking up frequently during the night with difficulty returning to sleep, waking up too early in the morning, or unrefreshing sleep. This can be caused by various factors such as stress, depression, overthinking, medication, liver illnesses, or just poor sleeping habits. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 50 to 70 million adults in the US suffer from sleeping disorders. But what happens to the brain? Bridget Salas and her research team from Johns Hopkins identify brain differences linked to insomnia. They report that people with chronic insomnia show more plasticity and activity compared to good sleepers in the motor cortex region of the brain. Plasticity is the brain's ability to adapt and change to different stimuli and situations. They also found that there is more excitability among neurons in the same region of the brain. This suggests that insomniacs are in a constant state of heightened information processing that may interfere with sleep. They hope that their research will help for a better diagnosis and treatment of insomnia. Another research team led by Drummond and Matthew Walker used magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, to study how the lack of concentration during the day can affect insomniacs. The team found that insomnia sufferers did not properly turn on brain regions used for memory tasks and did not turn off the mind wandering region of the brain. The MRI scans revealed that insomniacs could not modulate activity in brain regions used to perform tasks. As a task got harder, good sleepers could use additional resources within the memory network of the brain, while insomniacs could not use those additional resources. This study provides measurable abnormalities in the brain, giving biological markers for future diagnosis and treatments. Researchers previously mentioned provide evidence that insomnia does affect the brain and not only that, but it interferes with simple daily tasks. Although neuroscientists still don't know the real reason why insomnia happens, current studies have provided the pathway for future research. Knowing the differences between a good sleeper's brain and a bad sleeper's brain will make a huge impact in future diagnosis and treatments for sufferers. Until then, here are some things you can do to improve your sleep quality. 1. Make sure your bedroom is quiet, dark, and cool. 2. Stick to a regular sleep schedule. This includes the weekends. 3. Avoid naps. If you must, limit it to 30 minutes before 3pm. 4. Avoid stimulating activity and stressful situations before bedtime. 5. Don't read from a backlight device. 6. Limit the consumption of caffeine, alcohol, and nicotine. Keep in mind, sleeping disorders can be caused by anxiety, depression, medications, illnesses, and or poor sleeping habits, among other factors. Before considering that you suffer from insomnia, the treatment of these factors can improve your sleep quality, thus improving your day. Do you suffer from insomnia? If so, how does it affect your daily routine? Do you have other suggestions that help improve your sleep? If so, comment on the bottom of this page to help the readers.