Cures and treatments for insomnia: Altering patterns that cause sleep disruption.
Treating any chronic mental and physical problems is an excellent first step in seeking healthy sleep, but it may be insufficient to cure persistent insomnia. One must also examine the daily habits of one’s life that can lead to sleep disruption. In fact, some of the practices you have been using because you think they help you deal with your insomnia may actually make the problem worse.
Insomnia Cures To Avoid
As an example, many people fall into the trap of using sleeping medications or alcoholic beverages to aid them in falling asleep.
Unfortunately, this approach inevitably leads to even more disrupted sleep patterns over the long term. Another common problem is ingesting excessive quantities of coffee or other caffeinated beverages during the day, often ironically to fight fatigue brought about by insomnia.
Unfortunately, for many people this makes falling asleep later very difficult. In many cases, simply altering the daily habits that cause sleeplessness are enough to beat the insomnia problem permanently.
It can take a week or two for one’s body to adapt to the chances, but once it does, better sleep is the reward.
Common behavioral causes of insomnia include:
- Consuming caffeine to excess.
- Consuming alcohol or using tobacco products before bed.
- Sleeping during the day.
- Or a chaotic schedule of sleep.
Some of your daily routines are so ingrained and innocuous-seeming that it is easy to overlook them as an insomnia cause. Your daily cup of Joe, your late-night tv or ‘net browsing addiction, such little factors can be big contributors to sleep difficulties.
Maintaining a diary of your sleep patterns is again an incredibly useful way to identify those factors which may be costing you a good night’s rest.
All the work required is for you to daily note the details of your daytime routine, sleep patterns, and sleep disruptions. You should keep track of approximately when you fall asleep and awaken, where you sleep, what you ingest during the day, and any stress triggers that may occur throughout the day.
Forming new habits that aid sleep.
Make your sleeping area dimly lite, comfortably cool, and quiet. Noises, excessive light, and uncomfortably warm temperatures can rob you of sleep. Consider using a white noise machine or some form of earplugs to block noises, open a window or turn on the A/C to cool the room, and heavy draperies or a mask to block excess light.
Try to keep a regular sleep cycle. Reinforce your body’s natural clock by laying down and arising at the same hour every day, including on the weekends. Arise at your set time every morning, even if you are tired. These practices will help you form a reliable sleep cycle.
In general, do not nap. Long naps during daylight hours can make night sleeping more difficult. If nap seem like a needful part of your lifestyle, try to make them at most half an hour, and before 3 in the evening.
Avoid excess stimulation prior to retiring. This includes intense workouts, stressful conversations and TV programs, computers and gaming. Switch off your tv at least sixty minutes before sleep time.
Reduce, or at least limit your intake of caffeine, alcoholic drinks, and tobacco.
Avoid at all costs drinking caffeinated liquids for eight hours prior to laying down. Don’t drink heavily in the evening.
While the depressant quality of alcohol can make you sleepy, these same qualities harm your sleep’s quality.
You should of course quit smoking for many health reasons, but if you can not make that commitment currently, at least avoid it at night. Nicotine’s properties as a stimulant can be very detrimental to sleep.
More hints for sleeping better:
Do what it takes to create a relaxing environment for sleeping. Develop a relation routine for just before bedtime. Fine-tune your schedule of sleep. Eat a sensible diet and exercise properly to improve your sleep.
How to Sleep Like a Baby Every Day
Treatments and cures for insomnia: Deal with anxiety when you can’t get to sleep.
One of the insidious qualities of insomnia is that in and of itself it introduces a worry to your mind that may make sleep even more difficult to fall asleep. You might begin to experience anxiety even before you go to bed, fearing another bout of sleeplessness until the wee hours of the morning. Perhaps you have an important task to deal with tomorrow, and are anxious that your performance will be sub par if you do not obtain a decent night’s sleep. Alas, such mental agonizing only worsens the depths of insomnia. Worry leads to the release of adrenaline into the body, a powerful stimulant that will certainly interfere with sleep.
Learn to mentally consider your bed the place where you sleep, not the place where you toss and turn.
If anxiety about sleeplessness is hampering your ability to solve that self same problem, some of the following techniques may be of help. The objective is to train the mind/body complex to think of the bed in the context of sleeping, not with anxiety or insomnia.
Try to use your bedroom only for lovemaking and sleep. (Note, if you are adventurous and don’t have kids about, there is no reason not to make full use of the other rooms in the house for the former activity.) Avoid working, reading, watching TV, ‘net surfing, or any other non-restful activity in your sleeping chamber. The plan is to get the brain associating your bed with sleep only, so it will automatically want to shut itself off when you lay down.
Do get up when you are tossing and turning and can’t drift off. You cannot force yourself into sleeping. Arise, leave the bedroom, do something you enjoy. A warm caffeine-free drink, a warm bath, or soothing music can all help.
Lastly you might want to consider using natural sleep aids when necessary such as Melatonin but these work differently for different people and might not be the insomnia cure you are looking for.