Sleeping Right

Many of us experience the occasional night of not sleeping without any severe consequences. It is when the occasional night here and there becomes a pattern of several nights in a row that you know you have a sleeping problem. Repeated loss of sleep affects all areas of your life: The physical, the mental, and the emotional. Sleep loss can affect your overall daily performance and can have a profound affect on your health. If your sleeplessness continues for a long period of time it can cause problems to your health, your relationships, and your professional life. It can become an endless cycle of worry and anxieties as you continue to lose sleep every night.

Insomnia and sleeplessness can be put into three main categories:

* "Initial" insomnia: where you have difficulty in falling asleep, generally taking 30 minutes or longer to fall into a sleep state.
* "Middle" insomnia: where after falling asleep you have problems maintaining a sleep state, often remaining awake until the early morning hours.
* "Late" or "Terminal" insomnia: where you awake early in the morning after less than 6 hours of sleep.

Recent studies show that approximately 25 million Americans suffer from chronic insomnia. Some reasons for insomnia include:

* Restless Leg Syndrome
* Circadian Rhythm Disorders
* Depression
* Alcohol and other drug abuse
* Life changes and/or accumulation of life stressors
* Anxiety
* Sleep Apnea

You should consult with your doctor if you are not sleeping so that you can determine the exact cause of your sleep problems. He/she may order you to take part in a sleep study, give you a depression screen, check your stress level, order a blood panel to check for vitamin and mineral deficiencies, suggest you stop drinking and/or smoking, give an anxiety scale or any number of other methods to identify a cause and get you started on the path to sleeping again.

Following are a few "Do's and Don'ts" on how you can start sleeping on your own again:

* When you go to bed try to deepen and lengthen your breathing patterns. Try to inhale for five seconds and then exhale for five seconds. You'll be taking six breathes per minute. This takes some practice but can work quite well to help put you to sleep.
* Take a deep breath and hold it. As you are holding your breath tense up the muscles all over your entire body and hold both for 30 seconds. Exhale your breath and then completely relax. Take several relaxed breathes and repeat three more times.
* Think of a relaxing color, such as blue, yellow, or green. Put your hands on your stomach and think of pulling a balloon (the same color as you have just chosen) across your stomach. Exhale out and think of a non-relaxing color such as black, brown, or red as you exhale. As you inhale think of the relaxing color once again. Keep up this pattern for about 10 to 30 times or however long it takes you to fully concentrate. You soon find yourself falling asleep.
* Take a hot shower or bath before bed.
* Before going to bed eat 1 ounce of protein, 1 ounce of cheese, and 5 grapes. This is considered “brain food” and can help you sleep.
* Get out of bed if you have not fallen asleep within about 15 minutes. Your brain is very easily programmed and can quickly associate your bed with “not sleeping”, a pattern that can be hard to break.
* Once you're out of bed do not watch TV, get on the computer, listen to stimulating music, or turn on a lot of lights. You don’t want to do anything that is going to stimulate your brain into thinking that it’s time to “get up”.
* If you get out of bed make sure that you just sit quietly. Meditate on clearing your mind. Studies show that deep meditation can be as helpful to your mind and body as sleep.
* Buy a Brain Entrainment CD and some ear buds (they are the most comfortable to sleep on). Make sure the CD is designed to help you sleep. There are many CDs of this kind on the market.
* Make sure that you sleep in a dark bedroom!
* Exercise regularly. Exercise can do a great job of regulating your sleep cycle. The only catch here is do not exercise within two hours of bedtime since exercising right before you go to bed can activate your mind and body.
* Drink a cup of Chamomile tea an hour before bedtime and take Valerian root with it.
* Stay away from alcohol as a way to get to sleep. You don’t want to fall into the habit of relying on a drink before bed to help you sleep.