Insomnia Syndrome, Literature Research And Academic Origins

Insomnia is the perception or complaint of inadequate or poor-quality sleep because of one or more of the following: difficulty falling asleep, waking up frequently during the night with difficulty returning to sleep, waking up too early in the morning, sometimes even can not falling to sleep at all overnight. Insomnia often affects isomniacs's normal work, life, study and health. In the modern society, people are under a lot of pressures and stresses because their working rhythm is getting faster and faster. This is one reason why insomnia is so common. Meanwhile, insomnia makes people more stressful physically and psychologically. So the study of insomnia is very important for improving the health and quality of life of people.Chinese traditional medicine (TCM) has more than two thousand years of knowledge about insomnia. TCM doctors over past dynasties has stored up very plentiful knowledge and clinical experiences for this syndrome. They invented many effective therapeutics and formulas. They provided us very precise and plentiful literatures about insomnia. Based on bibliographical study, I collected and analyzed insomnia -related materials from TCM literatures published over past two thousand years. I explained systematically academic characteristics about insomnia in different dynasties, from Early-Qin dynasty to the time of Republic. Also, from the aspect of TCM history, I explored internal relationship between insomnia academic progress and the development process of TCM theory, in order to reveal the origin and development of insomnia. In this article, I also analyzed and summarized famous modern TCM doctors' academic theories and clinical experiences about insomnia, in order to provide new research and clinical ideas for insomnia.This article includes two parts, general introduction and individual chapters. In the general introduction part, I discussed the academic history of insomnia, including the syndrome's synonyms, causes, pathogenesis, treatments based on pathogenesis, other therapies and prevention. I also discussed several theoretic issues related to insomnia.In the part of individual chapters, I discussed insomnia literatures in the order of dynastic history. I recapitulated and analyzed insomnia-related literatures from Early-Qin, Three-kingdoms, Two-jin (Western and Eastern Jin), Southern and Northern dynasties, Sui, Tang, Five-Generations, Song, Liao, Jin, Yuan, Ming, Qing, and Republics, respectively. I emphasized analyzing the issues such as insomia's synonyms, causes, pathogenesis, treatments based on pathogenesis, other therapies and preventions from those insomnia-related literatures. I also analyzed and summarized famous modern TCM doctors' academic theories and clinical experiences about insomnia.