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Sleep complications can lead to serious health conditions, but unlike many neurological disorders, sleep conditions are treatable. You can fix them.
You might go to bed when you’re fatigued, but not necessarily sleepy. You climb into bed early, feeling all your strength drained away. Despite your fatigue, though, you’ll actually struggle to fall asleep because you aren’t sleepy. This is a recipe for insomnia.
The list of things that cause fatigue is endless. Here’s a small list I’ve made for starters: Hypothyroidism Parkinson’s disease Vitamin B12 deficiency Medication side effects Iron deficiency Malnourishment
Paradoxical insomnia is the phenomenon in which an individual thinks she is either not sleeping or is sleeping a very reduced amount compared to her actual sleep, which often is fairly normal.
Take your cue from the holiday when you need a midnight snack. Look for dried fruit, cereal, or bananas.
Other foods that are good choices for sleep contain high amounts of melatonin. These foods include walnuts and tart cherries (dried or juice). Foods high in tryptophan are sleep promoting because tryptophan is the building block of melatonin. Game meat like elk and chickpeas are high in tryptophan content.
When it comes to sleep promotion, hot chamomile tea or passionflower tea can also be helpful.56
For a great bedtime routine, start with exercise in the morning. Exercise is good any time of the day, but if it is done consistently in the morning, particularly in bright light, it can create a positive effect on sleep when it is time to hit the sack.
get a notebook and before getting in bed, write down the things on your mind. Practice restricting this writing to an hour-long period in the evening.
Muse (www.choosemuse.com) is a small biofeedback device that wirelessly connects to your phone. Muse detects your brain waves and can convert them into the sound of the ocean. By using the device, you can “hear” the activity level of your brain and practice calming it down.
It’s important to remember that resting even without sleeping is good for you too. You’re not wasting your time if you are lying in bed and not sleeping.
Make your room dark. Crazy dark. Spend so much money on your new bedding and room furnishings that you can’t afford your nicotine and caffeine habits anymore. Buy your spouse a special gift, then kick him out of your bed until his own sleep problems are fixed. Develop a sleep routine. Feel free to incorporate Goodnight Moon. It works on adults too.
The insomnia identity centers around the idea that the insomnia patient believes himself to be a bad sleeper or someone who cannot sleep, often despite evidence to the contrary. This is the main target of CBT-I.
Thou shall not worship any sleep aids, noise machines, or iPhone sleep apps. Thou shall not create any graven image of insomnia and then blame it for all of the bad things in thy life. Thou shall not take the name of the Lord in vain when thou triest to sleep but cannot. Remember the Sabbath. Keep it holy. Quit sleeping in on these days. Honor thy mother and father. Quit blaming their genes for your insomnia. Thou shall not kill, steal, or commit adultery. The guilt will really screw up your sleep. Sleep is the most important thing in the world. Tonight’s sleep is relatively meaningless. Thou
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Fear and helplessness are the fuel that powers insomnia. Education about sleep is the solution. Controlling what you can control and letting go of the rest is the solution to your helplessness. You have power here. Insomnia can exist only in an individual who cares.
The technical term for a night owl tendency is being phase delayed. A morning lark is someone who is phase advanced. Being phase delayed or phase advanced does not represent a sleep disorder necessarily.
The single most important thing to achieving successful sleep is to have a consistent wake time.
When an individual is struggling to maintain his sleep at night, the last thing we want to do is to expand the period in which he is trying to sleep (for example, by going to bed earlier or sleeping later).
My favorite lavender spray is the two-ounce Aura Cacia Pillow Potion. I like this because I can keep it in my carry-on (for spraying in my Marriott Hotel room), and it won’t get confiscated by the airline TSA agents.
