Insomnia in the elderly is a common sleep disorder, whose symptoms are characterized by difficulty in falling asleep, poor sleep, easy waking, early awakening, excessive dreaming, and fatigue or lack of wakefulness after waking. Thinking about sleeping during the day can seriously affect work efficiency or social functioning. The onset of insomnia usually occurs at least three times a week and lasts for more than one month. In order to distinguish the different time stages of insomnia, insomnia is divided into three forms: difficulty in falling asleep, unstable sleep, and early awakening. Difficulty in falling asleep is characterized by difficulty in falling asleep 30 minutes or even 1-2 hours after lying in bed, tossing and turning, restlessness, panic and discomfort, and by the time one falls asleep, it is already late at night. Sleep instability is manifested as shallow sleep, dreamy and easy to wake up, but after waking up, you can fall back to sleep, but you have to wake up more than 3-4 times every night, and your sleep efficiency is low, so you have to sleep 20% less every night, while normal people usually do not exceed 5%. The symptoms of sleep deprivation appear because the quality of sleep is affected by repeated awakenings during the night. Early awakening is still able to fall asleep slowly, but wake up only 2-3 hours of sleep, then repeatedly can not fall asleep, 2 hours or more before the morning woke up, and can not fall back to sleep or seem to sleep, repeatedly dreaming. As they wake up in the middle of the night, they have to wait until dawn to get up, and if everyone in the family is still sound asleep at that time, the insomniacs will be more irritable and irritable. Insomniacs all have the experience of not being able to sleep at night and feeling uninspired during the day. This not only affects work, study and life, but also causes other diseases, which is not good for health and even increases the workload of the patient’s family members. The common causes of insomnia in the elderly are: 1, physiological factors: older, sleep requires less time, nerve cells decrease with age, and sleep is an activity phenomenon of the brain, due to the reduction of nerve cells in the elderly, it can naturally cause sleep disorders in the elderly, and insomnia is the most common symptom. 2, various psychological factors: if the elderly are overexcited before sleep, the excitement of the cerebral cortex increases, such as excessive consideration of family chores before sleep, participate in, watch stimulating recreational activities, parties and film and television programs, etc.. As well as various stresses in life, including work stress, life stress and emotional stress. Work energy is not good, not valued; life chores, unbearable; emotional children away, husband and wife discord, can cause the elderly to think, anxiety, nostalgia, sadness, worry, anxiety, pain, etc., can make the elderly insomnia. 3, environmental factors: changes in the sleep environment such as changing rooms, beds, with noise, bright light or too cold, hot, etc.. Environmental clutter and unrest, but also easy to wake up the elderly shallow sleep and can not fall back to sleep. 4, disease factors: the elderly with age, cerebral arteriosclerosis degree gradually aggravated, or accompanied by hypertension, cerebral hemorrhage, cerebral infarction, dementia, tremor paralysis and other diseases, the emergence of these diseases, can make the brain blood flow reduced, causing brain metabolic disorders and insomnia symptoms. The elderly mostly suffer from cardiovascular diseases, respiratory diseases, and other degenerative spinal diseases, cervical spondylosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and numbness of the extremities. These diseases, which can affect sleep because of the disease itself or accompanying symptoms, aggravate the insomnia of the elderly. In addition, relevant data statistics, the proportion of elderly people with depressive state and depressive tendency is significantly higher than that of young people. Depression mostly has symptoms such as insomnia, irregular bowel movements and panic attacks, and its sleep disorders mainly show early awakening and reduced deep sleep. Also, the increase in the number of nocturnal urination is a common phenomenon in the elderly, in addition to diuretics will increase the number of nocturnal urination, the elderly forced urinary muscle dysfunction and prostate hypertrophy, bladder residual urine, will also lead to an increase in the number of nocturnal urination, thus disrupting sleep. 5, drug factors: before going to bed with drugs that cause nervous excitement, such as isoniazid for the treatment of tuberculosis, ephedrine and aminophylline for the treatment of wheezing, etc., easy to produce excitement and difficult to fall asleep. Also levodopa and phenytoin sodium can cause insomnia in the elderly. Levodopa can cause insomnia and can also cause nightmares and disrupt sleep. Taking diuretics at night can increase the number of nighttime urination, causing difficulty in falling asleep again. 6, sleep rhythm disorders: the elderly do not have much to do during the day, so too many naps during the day, is also one of the reasons that affect the sleep of the elderly at night. Older people are generally sleepy, in a quiet environment, with nothing to do, daytime naps tend to increase, and sleep at night is not good. The prevalence of insomnia in the elderly is high in the population, insomnia can not only cause aggravation of physical diseases, but also induce new physical diseases, with adverse consequences, to cause us to pay sufficient attention, if necessary, under the guidance of physicians to take sleeping drugs.