The number of insomnia patients is increasing. Patients with insomnia are usually diagnosed as “neurasthenia”, “neurosis”, “depression”, “anxiety disorder “and so on. In fact, some patients with insomnia are related to lesions in the sleep structures of the brain, and insomnia should not be simply designated as a functional disorder. So, what brain lesions are associated with insomnia? Relationship with the pineal gland In the center of the brain, that is, in the midbrain: on the tegmentum, on the corpus callosum pressure there is a sphere called the pineal gland, which secretes two hormones, one is melatonin, and the other is peptide hormones. Melatonin secretion has a distinct circadian rhythm, with a decrease in daytime secretion and an increase in nighttime secretion. When melatonin secretion decreases at night, insomnia will occur. In addition, melatonin secretion is related to sex hormone secretion. When the secretion of sex hormones increases, the secretion of melatonin decreases, thus causing less sleep. For example, some teenagers are hypersexualized and have reduced sleep, which in turn reveals a pineal tumor. Pineal tumors can cause a decrease in melatonin secretion and an increase in sex hormone secretion. A recent case of a 60-year-old male patient, who had suffered from insomnia for many years, was aggravated for six months. He was diagnosed with “neurosis” despite the fact that he had been diagnosed with “pineal cysts” by MRI. The author read his medical history and asked him how his sex life was, and he replied: “I love it. The wife I just married is more than ten years younger than me.” I told him that cysts in the pineal region are the cause of insomnia and that treatment must be given for this condition in order to cure insomnia. After a physiological dose of melatonin to promote sleep and conservative treatment with herbs, the patient’s insomnia improved significantly. Relationship with the supraoptic nucleus Waking up with eyes open and going to sleep with eyes closed is the normal life experience of the general population. In contrast, insomnia patients are lying in bed and do not want to close their eyes, or cannot sleep with their eyes closed. Tests have proved that the effect of light and dark light on the pineal activity during day and night is related to vision and sympathetic nerves, because the circadian rhythm variation of melatonin secretion is also lost when the animal’s eyeball is removed or the sympathetic nerves innervating the pineal gland are cut. Therefore, the supraoptic nucleus is considered to be the central circadian rhythm controlling melatonin secretion. The vast majority of people sleep with their eyes closed, and they do not fall asleep with their eyes open. This means that sleep is related to sympathetic nerves, and when sympathetic nerves are excited, a person cannot fall asleep. Then, any disease that causes sympathetic excitement can cause insomnia. The most common disease is hyperthyroidism. Because of excessive secretion of thyroid hormone, the whole body metabolism is accelerated, sympathetic excitement, increased heart rate, increased sweating, protruding eyes, irritability, easy to have verbal arguments with others, reduced sleep or insomnia, or “fighting” and “quarreling” in dreams, and so on. In this case, we must treat “hyperthyroidism” in order to cure insomnia. Of course, there are many other diseases that cause sympathetic excitation, such as nephritis, renal insufficiency, pheochromocytoma, cervical spondylosis, soft tissue inflammation of the neck, etc. Relationship with cervical sympathetic nerve Many insomnia patients toss and turn in bed and cannot fall asleep, always feeling that discomfort in the cervical region affects their sleep. In fact, the neck tissues are indeed related to sleep. From the above analysis, we already know that the pineal gland is related to sleep, and the pineal cells are evolved from nerve cells. There are three segments of cervical ganglia distributed in the neck, namely the superior cervical sympathetic ganglion, the middle cervical sympathetic ganglion, and the inferior cervical sympathetic ganglion. The postganglionic fibers of the superior cervical sympathetic ganglion form synaptic connections with the pineal cells and regulate the activity of the cells of the pineal gland through the release of norepinephrine, i.e. melatonin secretion. Therefore, by adjusting the supra-cervical sympathetic ganglion through stimulation, sleep activity can be adjusted. According to the author’s more than ten years of clinical research, neck diseases are the most common cause of insomnia. The common cervical diseases include: cervical spondylosis, including atlantoaxial subluxation and subluxation, cervical disc protrusion, hypertrophy of the ligamentum flavum, straightening of the cervical curvature or lordosis, cervical osteophytes; inflammatory lesions of the neck muscles, inflammation of the posterior pharyngeal wall, etc. Therefore, in clinical practice, the author uses a variety of methods to treat neck disorders as a way to cure insomnia. Relationship with the frontal lobe of the brain It has been suggested that the frontal lobe of the brain has some relationship with the sleep-wake system of a person. The main function of the frontal lobe is related to human thoughts, thinking, emotions, personality, intelligence, memory, etc. Therefore, insomnia often occurs when people have something in their mind that cannot be resolved. By inference, any disease that stimulates the frontal lobe of the brain can also cause insomnia. For example, frontal lobe infarction, frontal lobe tumor, etc. There is one type of disease that is closer to the frontal lobe, so these diseases often cause insomnia or poor sleep quality. This type of disease is paranasal sinusitis. As you may know, the paranasal sinuses consist of four parts: maxillary sinus, butterfly sinus, sieve sinus, and frontal sinus, which are connected and can easily cause paranasal sinusitis when you have a cold. The paranasal sinuses are in close proximity to the brain, and the location of the paranasal sinuses is often referred to as the “danger triangle”, because an infection in this area, if not handled properly or out of control, can lead to secondary brain infection, causing encephalitis or brain abscess. The actual situation is that there are very few cases of encephalitis caused by lesions in the “danger triangle”, while headaches, insomnia, memory loss, dreaming, dizziness, anxiety, depression, etc., are common secondary to paranasal sinusitis. Currently, such patients are often referred to psychiatry, neurology, sleep centers, and otolaryngology for treatment. The treatment by psychiatrists and neurologists is generally psychological counseling, application of antipsychotic drugs, and patients are often made to tremble in their limbs and be unresponsive by the side effects of antidepressants. The general treatment by doctors in sleep centers is sedation and physical therapy. ENT doctors apply surgical or conservative anti-inflammatory treatment according to the condition to make the condition better or cure. However, ENT treatment is not a complete cure, and many patients will relapse again six months to a year after surgery. Because paranasal sinusitis is particularly close to exogenous factors, physical factors can cause patients to constantly exogenous and gain the disease again. Therefore, the fundamental way out of this problem is to improve physical quality, improve immunity and combine prevention and treatment. The author applies traditional Chinese medicine and treats patients according to their physical factors, which can often solve these problems. In short, insomnia is a symptom and a disease, when some diseases cause insomnia, insomnia is the symptom of this disease, called secondary insomnia, when the disease that causes insomnia can not be found, this insomnia is primary insomnia. Everything has a cause and a consequence, insomnia is also the same, it is best to find the cause of insomnia, then there is a way to treat insomnia.