Jeez Louise! It's NIGHTLY now!If you haven't gone through chronic insomnia you cannot believe the Stephen King horror of the thing. If you haven't tossed all night without a wink and faced this torture nightly, then you cannot believe the terror that brings kings to their knees. If you haven't dragged yourself around blearily the day after, you can NOT imagine the grogginess and emotional suffering that goes with it.
The usual insomniac is a person who is an habitual night owl, has a body in tension, every muscle is made of cement, can't relax thus can't sleep easily, is mentally agitated, typing, writing, fussing, then gets so exhausted she goes to sleep, wakes in a while, does some more typing, fussing, sleeps again, wakes up hungry, needs food, (which should be right by bed, so one needn't rouse oneself,) but he must go in kitchen, cook and eat, then sleeps fitfully. WORSE, when the HIGH energy of dawn hits us, which the Sikhs call the AMBROSIA hours, our insomniac totally cannot sleep. The sun is up, so she's only truly had 4 hrs sleep. SHE will age, her organs will age. Her immune system will leave her open to all the genetic diseases in her family tree. And she'll go crazy!
If you have this restless condition, you GOTTA get into power over it. LESS THAN 8 hrs a night fatigue AGES, depresses and leaves the door open for mental problems including schizophrenia, paranoia, and jerky nervous system overreacting to everything with weeping and temper so that all the people around her think' damn, she's odd,' all of which can be caused by a lack of sleep! Most of us just have poor FOCUS from those four hour nights, but isn't that enough?
Experts say NO! <=== There is a lot MORE HERE to fix.Follow these easy rules and you will find it's very easy to get insomnia out of the picture. There are two causes of insomnia: fast heart beat, (quit caffeine) & low blood sugar (quit refined carbs, sugar, alcohol, starches, baked goods). This combo will HEAL the pre-diabetic pancreas and dried up, shriveled adrenals that demand coffee all day and are messing with your ability to sleep.)
At some point in his/her life, the famous light sleeper who drinks coffee and sez they can do it with impunity, will have coffee turn on him. When it does, that single, morning 'Cup of Java' gives a 24 hour inability to sleep especially if it's a high voltage African coffee. That can get you for two days of wakefulness.
Quitting coffee is a headache. Literally. If you plan to switch to decaf, take pain killers every AM for the first few days while you half the daily dose. A full cup becomes a half, then the half becomes a quarter. As your bowels will tighten up with out that morning blast…… for that first week, take herbal laxatives every night (a spinach salad will do) and eat very lightly that week, no sticky white flour foods, less meat, lots of raw vegie juices or fruit taken between meals. This regimen will make it easy to quit caffeine. Although I am verging on malarkey when I say that. As Mark Twain said 'it's easy to give up (coffee) I've done it thousands of times.' (He was talking about tobacco, but it applies.)
After you quit, Drink Colombian (most flavorful) De-Caf in the a.m., your daily dose ground fresh from whole beans in your blender, as it tastes the way coffee should, (especially GEVALIA, avail. only through mail order and best is Colombian light roast). Decaf satisfies that habitual need or try Mate Tea from Argentina, a ‘soft’ caffeine, or try "Constant Comment" tea in the AM or Yogi Bhajan’s famed YOGI TEA. (Mix cinnamon sticks, cloves, black pepper corms, raw, sliced ginger, crushed cardamom pods, all of it dumped into a few quarts of pure water, softly simmered 20 minutes, then add some dry, whole black tea leaves, good bovine hormone free milk, honey to taste and simmer another 5 min. You will not believe how fine this fabulous brew is! True, yogi tea has some caffeine but not a dealbreaker amount as the milk buffers it. You can drink it all day, drink a little in the afternoon and night, switch to NON caffeine teas or a thimbleful of de-caf coffee after dinner as even de-caf has enough jarring nerves in it for a true insomniac.
My favorite remedy is head lettuce, iceberg lettuce, that round one. One bowl with salad dressing at bedtime and you fall into a deep sleep. Why? It's lightly dosed with opium. Member of the poppy family. The sleep producing alkaloid is in it!
At bedtime, make a SERIOUS, holistic sleeping potion of all the herbs that knock people out and take them after you suck down (literally as you suck them for five minutes) a couple of melatonin pills, the sublingual kind. But no herbs in capsules as they take hours to work, are still in your gut tomorrow when you are trying to work and don't welcome stupor! So empty caps into water about to simmer, turn off fire before it boils, let the herbs STEEP and drink it as tea.
NEPENTHE TEA - This is pure ‘soma’. (Soma was a mythological producer of dreams.) 2 cups of Britta water (I make my own. A DYNAMIC invention, the Brita pitcher)… brought ALMOST to a simmer, about 155 degrees, between a bath and a boil…. Turn off fire, throw in a fist of herbs, passionflower leaves, (available throughout Southern Calif in most gardens), catnip, hops, valerian, skullcap, vervain, bought from holistic herb supplier. And chamomile, from any super market. Any healthfood store has bottles of herbal Sleep mixtures but they're more costly than buying herbs in bulk. Open capsules drop contents into the pot of ALMOST boiling water. And turn it off. You do not want a boil. A STEEP is what you're looking for. Squash a single, dried red poppy bollix if you want to dream in Chinese. (Get oriental poppy seed at flower stores, grow your own, save the dried boluxes. (What’s there after petals drop. LET IT MATURE.) You will see pagodas and emerald lyre birds in your dreams. But I notice a strong emotional depression, hitting the afternoon of the day after I use a poppy bollix in my nighttime tea. I pass that fact on for you to research personally.
DIETARY NOTE- Certain foods invite sleep: Poultry, Turkey especially and iceberg lettuce. You can stew the lettuce into a mug of onion soup and have it at bedtime. This kind of lettuce is full of sleep producing narcotic alkaloids. You won't believe it until you see it. I boiled some with the cat's meat, like a half head, tore it apart into little pieces with the meat; They ate ravenously and konked out for hours, dead to the world.
HERB NOTE: FOR cheaper herbs, like hops, skullcap, valerian, try MAIL ORDER. All Healthfood Magazines in the stores have ads on back pages with bulk herb suppliers. Anyway, let the tea sit covered to STEEP for 5 minutes. Drink a cup while you watch tv or read. It will make the strong desire for sleep COME UPON YOU like a thick cloud, a stuporous cloud, a strong desire for the pillow. The other cup you leave by bed for any accidental wake ups. Slop some down, and back to sleep you go.
SUPPLEMENTS - CALM (magnesium,) deepens sleep, is closest thing to a poppy bolux I ever tried. Deep muscular relaxation. Avail any healthfood store, little envelopes you take at bedtime. I use half of one, rinse mouth as they add Vit C. The combination that makes us sleep deeper is calcium and magnesium. Get a supplement of one or both together and give it a shot. You will be impressed. http://www.hylands.com has THREE insomnia relievers. http://www.naturessunshine.com/us/ has many also and very inexpensively.
ACCESSORIES! Try wax Earplugs and a cotton bandana folded into an eye shade. Use bee's wax earplugs that when warmed by body, can be rolled, formed into something the exact shape as ear canal. Every pharmacy has them for sale. They are the costly ones. Avoid cheap ones. FLENTS used to be a good brand. SLEEP WELL is also. If I can't find those, there is a 3$ version at CVS. Keep them wrapped in tissue under your pillow by day. The plugs prevent traffic or house sounds, neighbors' dogs, trash trucks from jarring your brain awake. For the eyes, a soft cotton bandana or silk scarf, folded into an on-the-bias as a blindfold works well. The shade prevents the morning light from waking you before you've had your full nine. Trashcan pick up day you will be REALLY glad you had them!
DUTCH HUSBAND METHOD- Sleep on your right side, somewhat face down, but have a long fat pillow sleeping at your left side, (say hello to your 'Dutch Husband'). To not bend neck, have a regular down pillow under head. Sleep on your right side, left side leaning over the long or standard sized pillow, left knee on the long pillow, which is like a body beside you, as this posture will open the left nostril, necessary for relaxing. If you sleep on other side, you open right nostril and that exhilarates the body. (In Yoga right nostril breathing is used to ‘yang’ you up, make you dynamic. No good for sleeping! Prop body up with pillow. Deep nose breathe being 1-pointed on breath YOGI BHAJAN said INHALE FOUR, HOLD SEVEN, EXHALE EIGHT and youd go right to sleep. OR Do mantra mentally, in time to heartbeat: om mani padme hum. You'll be mindless fast, then the visions of dreaming take over. Do this to re-enter sleep every time you wake. 4-7-8 and MANTRA
A diehard insomniac may have to take a square of cheese to bed with him, in a piece of foil or plastic. Not napkin as cheese is sticky. Every time you wake, take a bite. Chew, swallow. Then, rinse your mouth with a glass of clean water by bedstand.MONEY HONEY! So, --as we've learned, to rid yourself of insomnia, get rid of booze, sugar, stimulants like caffeine and chocolate -- also you have to somehow ditch your money worries. Having to earn huge extra to cover mortgages gone wild and do it in a jobless world is actually nothing if you go to the "LEARN GUERILLA CAPITALISM" webpage. Free webinar for you, the mate and kids too! Folks have done this method for thousands of years. Learn it!
As for THE DOCTOR AND HIS HARD TO GET RX PILLS: With strong sleeping pills like AMBIEN we do get SLEEP. BUT IN SENIORS WITH POOR HEARTS may get less circulation. We ordinarily move during sleep. The body re-accomodates the areas that are oxygen deprived due to our position. With Ambien, we do not. We sleep like stones ergo we get a little numb by waking hour so STRETCH THOSE A.M cricks in our neck. You may be courting brain damage, other parts too, if you fool around w. too much Ambien. 5mgs is all you need. Since getting a social worker and doctor, courtesy of the State, I began using this very effective sleep aid. ZOLPIDM its generic form,20$ for 30 tablets which I'd bite in half only taking5mgs a night. I suddenly developed the crick in neck syndrome. Never had it before. Also GOUT (what you call arthritis) forms. I wake to my painful feet. The same crystals of uric acid that form in the neck crick, way more than usual, gang up on the extremities. A real load forms while you snore away narcotized. The extremities are foot, fingers but the Brain is also an extremity. Hardening of arteries in brain. So you wanna think out this need for a total knock out. If you crave the full ten meg caplet, it's just to counter the huge anxiety in your life during a recession. Caffeine addiction. Work on that instead! A SECOND INCOME is required but not all that coffee.
Meanwhile, use tisanes. What I note is that with an herbal tea, chamomile, valerian, (has a Ptooey taste but it's natural valium...) you're fairly sleepy & you can get down for four or five hours easy. however, that is NOT enough. The 'crucial thing is to go back to sleep at dawn when you wake early. So do YOGA BREATHING. INHALE count of7, HOLD count of EIGHT, RELEASE count of 8. ZONK you go back down.
THAT EARLY MORNING WAKE UP! Dawn hits hard due to 'ambrosia hours' (yogis call them, the natural meditation hour. The universe is on morning alert. Birds sing, but it's not the noise, it's a vibe that's ALL JAZZY. You wake to THINK and of course, the anxiety is strongest then. Thinking absolutely interrupts the 8 hr sleep that you MIGHT HAVE HAD. I was able to cope with ambrosia hour wake up call when I learned to do a simple mental two word mantra while doing cool mouth inhales through a slightly rolled tongue, a tech just given me by a yogi. Inhale thru rolled tongue SAT (true) Exhale NAM. (form.) Meaning everything down here is a true manifestation of our cosmic mind, so we gotta get in touch with how we create when we are NOT aware! Fear is a form of creation. Then a second choice, which you can interplay with the first mantra is to inhale WAHE (wow, great) and Exhale GURU. (Wisdom, teacher.) meaning how great is life, it teaches us solutions to every problem. Sleep of course is the big solution to all problems. It leaves you energetic enough to earn that extra money the next day!
LAST ADVICE: Never leave a live phone in the hall or bedroom or even the room next door! Unplug wires! Get in the habit of unplugging every single night.
You will sleep like nobody's business and you'll find that your body really feels best after 9 hours of sleep. This 8 hour rumor is Protestant Work Ethic. You'll end up looking like a Grant Wood painting if you only sleep 8. When you get GOOD at this, you're going to be catching those nine HOUR SLEEP FESTS regularly!
3 hrs is enough for us! We got hay to mow.
Right Ed? ED?
Is that dufus dozin' again?OTHER SLEEP SUPPLEMENTS: Try the amino acid ornithine*, a single amino acid, isolated. Try Vitamin C, Calcium citrate, magnesium ascorbate, a little of that new buffered 81 Milligram REGIMEN aspirin by Bayer, if your stomach isn't sensitive to the acidity of it, and niacinamide if you have a good liver, have had no hepatitis. And lately, MELATONIN is everywhere. Take two small pills of sublingual melatonin about an hour before bedtime. They don’t kick in FAST. But they do deepen the slumber. To sleep deeper, longer, take a cal/mag at bedtime. It's amazing how it sinks you into deep POPPY-like sleep. CAL-MAG supplements give good bones and calm nerves so sleep is easy. Time to start taking this wonder mineral supplement. 5 mgs of ZOLPIDEM (ambien) is enough for a woman.
THE HOT BATH IS REALLY COOL! New research shows that a naturally-occurring drop in body temperature late in the evening triggers sleepiness. In older people, particularly, this drop in body temperature might have become attenuated, so that the trigger is not activated. To activate the trigger, researchers recommend raising body temperature with a hot bath and then letting body temperature fall naturally afterwards. Try taking a hot soak before bedtime and then, put on your PJ's and robe and let your body cool off naturally. If this technique works for you, you will notice a difference the first night!
READING TIRES THE EYES - Bedtime reading habits knocks you out faster than TV as it strains the eyes a bit, and that creates the feeling of fatigue. Now, what you read affects the psyche. Reading COLIN WILSON on psychic powers or the life of Carl Jung predisposes toward visions as you drift off. Reading mysteries which are gripping makes you read past the point of fatigue to the point where you have to put the book down as your eyes are crossing.
FOR THE BASIC NERVE CONDITION- Black cohosh, cayenne, misteletoe, lady’s slipper root, skullcap, hops, wood betony, ginger, St. Johnswort, ginger root, passionflower, white peony, Valerian, Yucca, taken 2 hrs before bedtime, either as tea or in capsules with a B-Complex capsule. Sub lingual melatonin taken an hour before bedtime. Standardized "Kava" herb extract in capsules is also effective. Kava reduces the adrenaline hormone that keeps you "hyper." There are many including the "Kava-30" capsules, Enzymatic Therapy brand. At http://www.enzy.com these people have a website. They also make the best B-12 on the market, the only real B-12 out there. To save some money, find whole kava powder in bulk via 'back of health magazine' small ad, for mail order. Dose: 1 or 1-1/2 teaspoons, shake in small bottle with water, then gulp it down. Buy 2 ounces at first, to see if you like the taste (not too bad), and if it does the job. Some powders are weaker than others—but kava capsules are standardized.
GETTING MIND OFF THOUGHTS- If there is a habit of mental stress, do mantra of any sort. Your auntie's phone number. "God and I are one." Oriental Sanskrit syllables. These things don't create peripheral stress like thinking of your boyfriend problems does.
GET OFF STIMMIES- If you aren’t sleeping you have to find the hidden stimulants in your diet. Chocolate has theobromine, so should only be eaten in first few hours of the day. SUGAR gets you up so only eat it early in day. Wine has a low blood sugar kick a few hrs after you drink it. All alcohol does. Caffeine is found in many soda pops, and certainly in tea, is an alkaloid, (part of nature’s arsenal of poisons) causes kidney and adrenal fatigue, irreversible heart disease later requiring pacemakers; birth defects, kidney stones, hypertension, strokes, bladder cancer, higher cholesterol & triglyceride blood levels; for women, fibroid breast tumors. It accelerates hypoglycemia into diabetes, causes ulcers, loss of stomach acid, causing kidneys to fail, insomnia, nervous system damage, hardening of the arteries in the brain, low brain circulation and might be implicated in Alzheimer’s. More than 4 cups daily boosts men’s heart disease rate 30%, women’s 60%. Coffee is somewhat diuretic, but any genuine oriental tea is worse. Those bathroom visits arecausing excretion of the body’s minerals and vitamins which ages us prematurely. As your minerals are your calcium, magnesium, trace minerals and BONES your SKELETON is dissolving and departing through your BLADDER. When examining why you crave stimulants look to stressed out, fatigued ADRENALS. You're dragging your butt all day, so you're using Pepsi and Coke. And then you can't sleep.
To get your ADRENALS back to health. Quit sugar and caffeine. Use de-glycyrrhizined licorice, (avail at HFS, and NOT a candy like you think., but an herbal root) siberian ginseng (eleuthro); jamaican sarsaparilla, Prickley Ash bark, safflower flowers, dandelion root, horseradish, hawthorn, freeze-dried adrenals (except that MAD COW is in our animal population so organic sources required. ) Lysine will have a healing effect on adrenals. Last, you can try UNISOM, ORIGINAL FORMULA, not GEL, the best of the over-the-counter sleeping pills. One 1/2 hr before you want to sleep, near bedtime. Watch only peaceful t.v. shows in that last 1/2 hr before it hits.
SAFE STIMULANTS- TO STIMULATE yourself during day so that you are ambitious, dynamic and can do focused mental work, take coffee ONLY at breakfast, or quit and use ginko, KELP, (bladderwrack) gotukola, saw palmetto new brain products called 4-Thought, Brain Power or Perfect Energy or names similar to that. The Healthfood store is full of different formulas. TAKEN WITH BREAKFAST ONLY, they will jack you up all day, but still let you go to sleep at night, whereas coffee won’t always let you relax at night. Its effect is very lingering. Even though Herbs may get you MENTAL at night, and super stimulated, a 20 min hot bath, massage and few cups of your downer tea will knock you silly, let you sleep.
SAFE AND SOPORIFIC NIBBLES - Last secret to STAYING asleep, you people who wake after 4 hours: Keep a piece of cheese wrapped in saran wrap under the other pillow. (If there’s no one sleeping on it.) Every time you wake, take a bite, chew well, then rinse your mouth with the sleepytime tea mix, rinse several times, drink some more tea just to go down again. The high calcium of this snack is a knock-out pill. Hypoglycemics sleep badly and never know that because you can’t FEEL low blood sugar as HUNGER it still can be a deal breaker as far as sleep goes. Sometimes you can just drink herbal tea or a mug of stewed iceberg lettuce in French onion soup and have the hunger pass, but not always. If someone would cook a steak near your bed, YOU’D HAVE ACID flow AND then you'd KNOW that you were hungry But if they don’t, you won’t know why you're awake. It’s subliminal, low-threshold hunger or LOW BLOOD SUGAR which will give you insomnia. SO NIBBLE AT NITE! Or put an half cup of dark beer or NEAR BEER by the bed and drink a few sips every time you wake. The blacker the beer the better. And don’t worry about the weight that a little nibble of pure protein puts on you. Worry about your LIFE going down the drain for a lack of sleep! THAT can be serious! But do worry about tooth decay. You must rinse wi water after each slug of beer. Then hit the pillow again.
PITSTOPS- With beer/ water, you're going to need to urinate. Hit the chamber pot or bathroom, without waking up very much. ROTS TEETH bigtime so rinse!
MELATONIN - Leaves me dazed the next day. So I don't like it. All commercial tablets are way too big. Correct dose is .01 mg, mini doses. Tablets in marketplace are l00 times that, 1. mg. So next day you are dizzy, blurry. Google this vitamin, you'll see some mom gave her baby 1 mg. I hate to think what that kids gonna be like by age two.
TPIN Pineal Complex - Combines pineal tissue extract, pyridoxal-5-phosphate with other synergistic nutrients for
maximum absorption and utilization to assist brain and nervous system functions.Studies show that the pineal gland governs circadian rhythms via melatonin and serotonin
production, balancing and supporting proper sleep-wake cycles and moods -
is crucial for the prevention of infections and disease.TPIN is indicated for conditions associated with jet lag,
insomnia,
seasonal affective disorder
attention deficit disorder
mental stress
fatigue
depression
nervous disorders
chronic fatigue syndrome
fibromyalgiaThe capsules are 100% pure vegetable-sourced
SEVENTH INNING STRETCH- The final nail in the coffin of insomnia is to get in control of the last wake-up and make it the second last wake-up. STRETCH that sleep two hours by pitstop first, then get in your favorite position, and keep from thinking. Any kind of thinking. Thinking you can't get another two hours appended to that six hours you just did. Thinking about family. Problems. To keep thinking from coming into your brain, you do silent mantra combined with long, slow deep breathing. GOD AND I ARE ONE tied to one, long slow inhale or any other mantra you were taught. Slow MANTRA with very slow breathing is so boring, it'll put you to sleep!
ALTERNATIVE RECOMMENDATIONS: Alternative Health
Treatment Tips for InsomniaSleep is a healing balm for every ill.
My insomnia improved when I changed my diet dramatically, took up yoga and made some other holistic health changes. I suspect that in my case a main cause of my sleeplessness was nutritional deficiencies and tight muscles which kept me from relaxing enough to fall asleep. Listed below are some of the tips that helped me to get a good night's sleep.
1. Diet - Insomnia in women seems to be linked at least partly to lower estrogen levels, which I think is why women often tend to develop insomnia at menopause. Estrogen helps with the uptake of magnesium into the soft tissues, and magnesium is the main nutrient needed to relax muscles and turn off the "flight or fright" response. So when estrogen levels are low, magnesium deficiencies and conditions they can cause such as insomnia, heart palpitations, anxiety and fibromyalgia may become more problematic.
I had trouble with insomnia when I was exercising a lot, underweight and on a low fat, high fiber, semi-vegetarian diet. In hindsight, I suspect this type of diet probably reduced my estrogen levels too low. A low fat, high fiber diet can be healthy for some people, especially women who are overweight and at risk for breast cancer, but in my case with my body type at that time, it was probably not the most healthy choice for me.
My insomnia improved as I added more fat to my diet, more magnesium rich vegetables, more red meat and less high fiber whole grain foods. I've found that I sleep best when I eat a moderately low carb diet with lots of homemade vegetable and meat soup with lots of leafy green vegetables. For more on the diet changes I found helpful, see my fibromyalgia diet section.
An article in the Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients by Melvyn R. Werbach noted that "a high magnesium, low aluminum diet has been found to be associated with high-quality sleep time and few nighttime awakenings, and magnesium supplementation has been reported to reduce sleep latency and result in uninterrupted sleep."
I am aware of a few other people, either friends or people who have emailed me about my site, who have also reported developing insomnia from eating whole wheat bread and were able to sleep better when they removed the whole wheat from their diets. The other night one of my children and I both had trouble getting to sleep, so I went over all of the ingredients in the foods we had for dinner. Sure enough, a "healthy" pizza I had bought had whole wheat in the crust. Interestingly, two other family members had the same pizza and noticed no ill effects. So I think for some people who are on the borderline of nutritional deficiencies, high fiber can be problematic. For more on this see my section on diet high in whole grain fiber.
Click here for a study on that found magnesium helped people suffering from insomnia related to periodic limb movements during sleep (PLMS), with or without symptoms of a restless legs syndrome (RLS),
According to researchers at the United States Department of Agriculture's Grand Forks Human Nutrition Center (GFNHC), among many maladies, magnesium deficiency can cause migraines, sleeplessness, and heart attacks. The GFNHC web page on magnesium deficiency notes that a diet inadequate in magnesium can cause brain wave changes, sleep disturbances, agitated sleep and frequent periods of awakenings.
2. Avoid caffeine. If I even have one cup of coffee in the morning, I don't sleep as well at night. I'm realizing now that this is because my liver isn't functioning really well and can't breakdown the chemicals in the coffee. Lately I've been experimenting with no grain and liver support diets and it is working out well. For the first time that I can remember I can actually have a cup of coffee in the morning and sleep at night, too.
I know quite a few people who drink several cups of coffee in the morning and then wonder why they have trouble sleeping at night. Yet, I've noticed that I sleep a little bit less with just a half a cup of coffee, even if I drink it early in the morning.
Take a tip from the past on how to sleep better -
"If we therefore wish for a refreshing slumber, we must begin by avoiding care and anxiety and take sufficient bodily exercise to induce the necessary muscle exhaustion."
Except from: Home Comforts: Or, Things Worth Knowing in Every Household, edited by By Edwin T. (Edwin Troxell) Freedley, 1878
3. Exercise - but very carefully. I think I was over exercising in the past which caused my muscles to be too tight, which in turn made it hard to relax and fall asleep. When my insomnia was at its worst, I was exercising for a couple of hours a day. This was based on recommendations from a physical therapist for my TMJ and fibromyalgia, but I was only getting stiff and sore from all of this exercise and not sleeping well at all. In hindsight, that physical therapist had me doing way too much strengthening and repetitive weight bearing exercises which just caused repetitive stress injuries and overly tight muscles.
"Aye, I suppose I could stay up that late." quote by James Clerk Maxwell, Scottish mathematical physicist, on being told on his arrival at Cambridge University that there would be a compulsory six o'clock a.m. church service.
My muscles relaxed and my insomnia improved when I found a better physical therapist who focused more on stretches, posture correction, massage and yoga type exercises rather than weight bearing ones. For exercise these days I try to focus on activities that don't tighten my muscles too much -- like walking outside and yoga. I try to only walk or do gentle yoga in the evenings so I don't get too wound up right before bed time.
A Harvard Medical School study found that yoga improved the study participants overall quality of sleep, including helping people to fall asleep easier and stay sleeping for longer periods.
A study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society found that elderly adults with moderate sleep complaints improved self-rated sleep quality through a low to moderate intensity Tai chi program conducted for six months.
4. Trigger Point Therapy. I've noticed that I fall asleep easier if I do my trigger point therapy right before bedtime. This releases my muscles and helps me to relax. Trigger point therapy is a kind of self massage that loosens trigger points, small muscle contractions, all over your body. (See my recommended book section for more on trigger point therapy).
5. Yoga. Yoga can help me fall asleep, but I have to pick and choose which postures to do. Some yoga postures can be quite strenuous, and I've noticed that if I do some of the standing poses too vigorously during the day my leg muscles will get overly tight and I'll have more trouble falling asleep at night. The yoga postures I find most relaxing are the ones you can do lying down like the knee squeeze and spinal twist. If I have trouble sleeping and wake up during the night, usually I'll do yoga floor postures until I get sleepy again and can fall asleep.
6. Listen to soft music. Lullabies really do work to make me sleepy. There are lullabies and songs made especially to fall asleep available. I made a CD from some lullabies on Itunes and I play it at night for ones of my sons who has problems getting to sleep.
7. Get sunshine. Try to get out and get some midday sun each day to get you body clock set appropriately.
8. Do you really need 8 hours of sleep? I personally think it is a myth that everyone needs 7 - 8 hours of sleep a night. I think how much sleep you need depends in large part on how tired out you get during the day. I think people who have physically taxing jobs like construction workers or farmers would need more sleep than someone who is a receptionist. I know on days when I don't have time to exercise I simply don't need as much sleep at night.
9. Reconsider the "warm glass of milk" remedy. Milk is very high in calcium which is a magnesium antagonist. As noted above, magnesium is needed to relax muscles and helps to improve sleep quality.
10. Use organic cotton bedding. Permanent press bedding can give off low grade chemical fumes while you sleep. Your body can deplete nutrients such as zinc and magnesium trying to detoxify these types of chemicals.
11. Open your bedroom windows when you can to let the fresh air in. Sealed up houses can be major sources of indoor air pollution. Fresh air puts less stress on your body by decreasing the amount if irritants and airborne particles your body has to detoxify.
FINAL CAVEAT - All these methods combined, will help you sleep like a baby but once an insomnia sufferer has experienced the full horror of this malady, they will always be apprehensive at bedtime. This 'fear' effect lingers for years afterwards, even though they mentally, rationally know that now they're on top of it. The fear of sleeplessness returning will always be there.
*NOTE: L-ornithine HCL" is available online, Jo Mar labs used to have it -- 450 milligram Capsules - 335 count - $23.50. phone: 1-800- 538-4545 (northern California) Call them to have a printed price list sent. Magnesium is at Walmart & CostCo very inexpensively.. I don't take calcium as it sits in ya, as plaque. But many cal mag mixes are out there. Your call.
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Our POSTER is ANITA SANDS HERNANDEZ, Los Angeles Writer, Futurist and Astrologer. Mother of four. Catch up with her websites TRUTHS GOV WILL HIDE & NEVER TELL YOU, also The FUTURE, WHAT'S COMIN' AT YA! FRUGAL LIFE STYLE TIPS, HOW TO SURVIVE the COMING GREAT DEPRESSION, and Secrets of Nature, HOLISTIC, AFFORDABLE HEALING. Also ARTISANRY FOR EXPORT, EARN EUROS. Anita is at astrology@earthlink.net ). Get a 35$ natal horoscope "my money/future life" reading now + copy horoscope as a Gif file graphic! No smarter, more accurate career reading out there!
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