How to Get a Better Night's Sleep - Naturally

If you suffer from insomnia, whether it’s short term (transient or acute) or long term (chronic), there are a couple of very important things that you need to know…

Identify the Source of the Insomnia

For most of us, the insomnia is actually caused or affected by some other agent. We call this co-morbid or secondary insomnia, and it represents about 80% of all the cases out there. The causes of this co-morbid dilemma usually require the help of someone who knows, through experience generally, how these things react with one another and present themselves in insomnia. I’m basically talking your family doctor, although if you’re really pressed it could be an actual sleep lab. What these people can do (it helps if you’re really honest) is find the root of the thing that’s causing or enhancing the insomnia.

It could be a medical condition, like arthritis or joint pain or restless leg syndrome, or sleep apnea (the last of which is really serious and needs to be handled properly and quickly). It could also be an interaction with a medication that you’re on – maybe it’s a drug with insomnia as a known side effect. You need to look at everything – maybe there’s a substance that you use (caffeine, alcohol, nicotine, marijuana, cocaine, anything) that’s causing the sleeplessness. Once you and your doctor have figured this out, and have taken steps to eliminate the problem, you’ll likely find that the insomnia goes away all by itself.

What If There Is No Source Of My Insomnia?

For about 20% of us, myself included, there is no obvious source for the insomnia. If you’ve eliminated all of the co-morbid potential contributors and you still can’t sleep, then you probably have primary insomnia.

Through my reading and personal experience, I can tell you that it’s pretty easy for your doctor to prescribe some sleeping medication, or for you to go to the pharmacy and take one of the several off-the-shelf brands of sleeping pills to get the rest you need. This is the easy road – but it doesn’t work.

Sleeping Medication can be a problem

Sleeping meds (over-the-counter and prescribed) have an effective life of a few weeks at best. At worst, you become dependent upon them, and cannot sleep without them. Since their effectiveness is short-term, and you become dependent on using them, then their effect after a month or two is purely placebo – you only think you need them. The nasty part is it’s your subconscious that believes they work (if they still do) – you can tell yourself until you’re blue in the face that they don’t work and you’re not taking them, but the decision is really not up to you – it’s up to the subconscious part of you.

I’ve got friends who take sleeping meds every night, and have for years. They know they’re not supposed to work, but they do. That’s the placebo effect working it’s magic! When they try and go off them, they cannot sleep.This is the other downside of sleeping meds - many of them cause a dependency that’s very difficult to get rid of – you experience a thing called rebound insomnia when you try and go off them. Often, the rebound insomnia is worse that the original insomnia you’re trying to treat! Most people give up and give in to the meds at this point, but I think it’s worth a try to live through the rebound insomnia, and get off the dependency.

A side note – the sleeping med I was on for over a year was lorazepam (Ativan), a powerful benzodiazapine. I took it for 3 months to get over the insomnia (which I didn’t) and then over a year to wean myself off this drug. The rebound insomnia I experienced was worse than the initial insomnia.

As you can see, sleeping meds come with a whole arsenal of bad side effects. So if you need to use them, use them very sparingly – once every few nights or weeks. Try not to become dependent on them at all!

Natural Cures for Insomnia

Fortunately for us primary insomnia sufferers, there is a wealth of options for us that do not involve visiting the drug store. Hopefully, one of these solutions will work for you and you won’t even have to visit the health food store for some exotic root or essence or scent. Give the completely holistic stuff a try first.

The first thing we should understand is that primary insomnia is often brought on by anxiety of some kind, depression, or stress. The “cure” for these if often some kind of meditation or cognative therapy. Learning to manage these stressors in your life has the double benefit of often curing the insomnia.

Regardless of the mental side of this issue, there are a few basic things you can do to prepare yourself for a restful sleep. In other parts of this blog (use the search engine) you can find all kinds of natural tips on how to get a good night’s sleep:

Make sure that your bedroom in a place of refuge, used only for sleep and sex.
Make sure the bedroom is clean, uncluttered, dark (turn your alarm clock to face away from you) and quiet.
Move pets out of the room (at least off the bed).
Get some good exercise (30 minutes minimum) every day – no exceptions.
Get light first thing in the morning. Stand by a window as you eat your breakfast or, if it’s still dark, invest in a light box (or make one!) and stand by it for 20 minutes (again, first thing in the morning).
Turn off the TV and the computer at least an hour before going to bed. The light from both of these devices convinces your brain that it’s daytime again.
Establish a night-time routine for getting ready for bed. Don’t plan anything that gets you exited – no violent or involving TV shows, no arguments with your family – you get the picture.
You might try one of the old remedies for sleep – valerian, kava root or lavendar. You might also see if a more modern “natural” drug works for you – melatonin.

If your insomnia still remains after you’ve done all of these, and established a routine with them, you’ll want to try some more aggressive methods that include moving your body clock around to establish a new sleep pattern. You might want to include some isochronic tones or binaural beats to the mix, which may help you in a kind of meditation.