Helping patients who say they cannot sleep. Practical ways to evaluate and treat insomnia

Why do some people spend most of the night tossing and turning while others drop off as quickly as a cat in the sun? There are many possible explanations for problems with falling and staying asleep and, sometimes, patients actually get a lot more sleep than they think they do. Each type of insomnia has its own set of symptoms, which can be used, along with appropriate diagnostic tools, to help in identification. In this article, Dr. Attarian describes differential diagnosis and summarizes the best treatment approaches to the common causes of insomnia.