Veterans ask, Why Can’t I Sleep ?
By:
Dr. Carol Henricks
On
18/05/2025Summary:
One of the biggest complaints combat veterans come to the clinic with is that they cannot sleep at night and therefore they never feel refreshed or restored. It is hard for them to fall asleep, stay asleep and sometimes wake up early in the morning without being able to return to sleep. They don’t dream. Other sleep disorders are common. Why is this happening ? Even with lots of alcohol, muscle relaxers, sedatives, supplements and sleep medicines their sleep is not restored.
Sedation is not sleep!
Sleep is not achieved by an “on off” button. Sleeps is a complex integrated function of the
brain. Many neural networks in the brain must coordinate activity with progression from a
waking state, to a sleep state, to a deeper stage of sleep and then into REM or dream sleep.
If the neural fiber tract networks are damaged by trauma such as concussion / blast injury /
DEW (and non traumatic causes such as ischemia / inflammation / infection / toxicity)then sleep
is disturbed. Network signaling takes place through electrical and chemical signals. More than 30 different chemicals in our brain vary with a circadian rhythm and support the sleep wake cycle. The more injured the network is, the more sleep disturbance occurs.
Important neural fiber tracts for sleep travel through the thalamus
(a nucleus in the center of the brain) up to the cortex of the brain and
down to the hypothalamus (a mid brain structure that is a central
controller of all our “automatic” bodily functions) then down through
the brain stem (where brain signals are conveyed out to the body).
Traumatic brain injuries cause diffuse brain injury resulting in
disconnections of these sleep pathways and disable the normal
progression of sleep.
The sleep state allows your brain to process information, consolidate
memory and clear itself from waste products / detoxify (by increased
circulation of the CSF through the brain’s lymphatic system).
If you do not sleep at night, your brain cannot restore itself.
