Sleep - Insomnia – Cures and Treatments

If you are diagnosed with insomnia and the insomnia is not a symptom of an underlying problem, it can most often be "cured" or "treated" by incorporating one or more changes into your life. If on the other hand your insomnia is the result of a mental disorder, a breathing disorder or some other type of physical disorder, making more than a behavioral or lifestyle change likely will be required.  Treatment will be based on the causes of insomnia in the individual.

Hanging curtains to help block out light and sleeping in a room separate from someone who snores are both things you can do to treat your insomnia. So is practicing one or more forms of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. The goal of cognitive behavioral therapy is twofold. It helps you change your thoughts at bedtime and it helps you develop more favorable sleeping habits.

Stimulus control involves retraining yourself to think of bed only as a place for sleep or for intercourse. If you want to watch television or read you need to do those activities elsewhere. Once you start associating bed only with sleep (or sex), the tossing and turning should cease, making it easier to fall asleep.

Progressive Muscle Relaxation helps many people who have trouble sleeping because they are not able to relax. While in bed their minds work in overdrive, thinking about the situations they should have handled differently during the day or worrying about all the tasks they have to complete tomorrow. With so much looking backwards and forwards, it's difficult to focus on the present task which is getting to sleep. Learning muscle relaxation and deep breathing techniques can help lower the stress, anxiety and tension that can keep you from falling asleep.  

Besides (or in addition to) muscle relaxation, psychotherapy sessions can help you work out times during the day for worrying or for planning the next day's activities so you stop doing this when you're supposed to be sleeping.

Visual imagery is another effective relaxation technique that can help you fall asleep. Rather than focusing on your task list, picture yourself in what you consider to be a calm, serene environment. Imagining yourself repeatedly doing something that calms rather than stimulates (like counting sheep) can also help you fall asleep.

Sleep Hygiene consists of changing all those bad habits that keep you from falling asleep at night. Just like dental hygiene can help keep your teeth healthy, sleep hygiene can help keep your sleep healthy.

Developing regular and consistent sleep and waking times, eliminating alcohol, nicotine and heavy meals 6 hours before going to bed, avoiding daytime naps, incorporating bedtime rituals such as a hot bath or light reading or other tasks designed to help you relax, making sure your bedroom is cool and dark and incorporating moderate evening exercise together can help you fall asleep faster and sleep deeper. Remember though, it's an all-or-nothing treatment package!

These non-medical treatments are proving to be extremely effective at reducing or eliminating insomnia. What's even better is that they're safe and have no side effects!