Who’s stressed? Who isn’t? Three in four U.S. adults say they felt moderate to high stress levels in the past month, as outlined by a 2009 stress questionnaire carried out by the American Psychological Association. Even teenagers find that school and family financial circumstances are stressing them out, with nearly 50 percent teens interviewed saying their worries have gotten worse during the last year. The end result? Many of us hit the sheets with our mind still churning, too wound up to sleep.

“No one sleeps well with worries,” says Joyce Walsleban, RN, PhD, associate professor of medicine at NYU’s School of Medicine. “They are too alerting. They will either keep you up or wake you up later on.”

Stress hormones shoulder a bit of the blame. When you’re stressed out, your adrenal glands release hormones, such as adrenaline and cortisol, which help keep you amped up and struggling to snooze.

Totally eliminating panic and anxiety from your life isn’t realistic. But learning how you can place your worries up on a shelf for the night will let you manage them so that they don’t ruin your sleep. First of all, bar your work life — a typical source of stress — out of your bedroom.

“We see people using BlackBerries and laptops in bed, responding to emails, and continuing to perform the work they do the entire day. For many who are afflicted by insomnia, that can perpetuate it,” says Alon Avidan, MD, associate professor of neurology and associate director of UCLA’s Sleep Disorders Program.

Walsleban recommends allowing your body time — an hour or so — to relax before slipping into bed. Take a bath, read a good book (try fiction!), and learn to practice deep breathing and relaxation routines to sooth nerves and encourage a peaceful night’s sleep.

Insomnia and depression are likely to go hand in hand, and it can be challenging to figure out which came first. In fact, research shows that people with insomnia have 10 times the danger of developing depression as individuals who get enough rest. And people who are depressed typically have a problem with insomnia, showing symptoms such as difficulty going to sleep, staying asleep, or waking up feeling rested. The brain chemical serotonin, which affects mood, emotion, sleep, and desires for food, according to Walsleban, is one likely reason the two conditions travel in tandem.

Ironically, Avidan warns, a typical class of medication used to treat depression — selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors — occasionally causes sleep problems, like periodic limb movement disorder, which causes your legs to jerk while you sleep, or rapid eye movement (REM) sleep behavior disorder, whereby people act out their dreams, punching, kicking, or jumping from bed while still asleep. Talk with your doctor regarding all possible medication unwanted effects.

Stress is really a regular element of life. Put a different way, to be human is to be stressed. Even so, stress does not need to be overpowering and intrude on your daily life. Check out and find out more about stress, depression, and sleep at Control Stress.

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