Lack of sleep can interfere with life.
Natural treatment for sleeping difficulties is not as hard as you may imagine and taking medications that have side effects is not necessarily the best option. In this blog, I will go over simple natural treatment tips for sleeping difficulties or insomnia.
When you don’t have a good night sleep, the next day you feel tired, and have a hard time focusing; before long, anxiety settles and you end up wondering what is going on. Unfortunately, many people these days are on anti-depression and anti-anxiety medications that have side effects.
Before long, they are taking other meds for the side effect of those drugs which may cause anxiety themselves. To break this cycle, the following tips are probably the better options to take while addressing other potential causes.
Most people use their digital devices until bedtime. Even with the nightlight setting for these devices, the impact on the brain is still present. It is best to avoid using your phone, iPad or computer at least 2 hours before bedtime.
Avoid eating late, eating a big dinner, or exercising at least 2 hours before bedtime. The brain and body need to calm down in order to sleep.
Avoid having bright light or lights from electronic devices or night light pollute your bedroom. This means no TV watching. If you are one of those people that need to have ‘noise’ present to fall asleep, get the white noise running on your phone with the screen shut off.
In colder weather season, put socks on!! The body temperature drops right before falling asleep and this is the reason why many end up waking up and then having a hard time falling back to sleep. Once you fall asleep, if you get hot, you will automatically take your socks off without waking up so don’t worry about getting hot.
If you live in an area where there are no outside noises late at night, it is best to crack the window open a little bit. For most, this is not an option so make sure the heater or AC are set at the appropriate temperature. I like running the humidifier in the cold winter times so the air is not so dry. During the summer, I hardly turn the AC on but that is always an option.
Depending on what your Metabolic Typing is and how early you eat dinner, eat a small snack that fits your Metabolic Type if, and only if, you have weak adrenals. Check out my website on Metabolic Typing and let me know if you have any questions about that. Since we are talking about weak adrenals as one of the reasons a person may have a hard time with sleep, let’s explore that a bit.
Your adrenal gland is like a generator, so when you are sleeping, the energy to run the body is provided by your adrenal gland. When your adrenal gland is weak, the ‘generator’ is out of ‘juice’ and therefore you wake up with the hopes of eating something to put in the ‘fuel’ to get the ‘machine’ running. There are different stages of adrenal fatigue and with salivary testings, the exact stage of adrenal weakness is determined.
Certain vitamin deficiencies lead to sleep disturbances as well. For instance, sometimes deficiency in Calcium and Magnesium is the culprit. However, it is important to be careful because taking these supplements when you are not deficient can lead to some other issues. The best way to find out what your body needs is by doing a blood work up but bear in mind that the lab range is actually the sickness range. Studies show that in adults the healthy range for Calcium is 9.4-10 and for Magnesium is over 2.0.
We should never disregard the impact of emotions on the body. Many times we are too busy dictating to our body and brain what our needs are and hardly ever take the time to ‘listen’ to what our subconscious brain likes to talk about. Most of us live a chaotic life when the brain finds comfort in being organized and being able to look at the ‘inventory’ of the past experiences to predict what to expect.
More often than not, we are ‘running’ to catch up all the time. This can be very stressful on every level. Many times, there are simply too many things on our mind to rest enough to fall asleep. When you are not able to sleep, instead of ‘counting the sheep’, looking at the clock wondering how many more hours or minutes before you have to get up to get ready for work… get OUT OF BED!!
Yes, get out of bed, grab a piece of paper or notebook and a pen and simply WRITE what your brain wants to talk about!!! Your role is not to judge the accuracy of the statement, not to correct yourself grammatically, not to validate anything but to simply write. Get what is on your brain’s ‘mind’ on the piece of paper. Be the best listener you can be to listen to what your brain has to say. You will be amazed at how oblivious you might have been for so long.
All of these tips are meant to direct you to a healthier, more meaningful life, one through which you can enjoy this adventure called life. There are no side effects, no wars, no arguments. These all allow you to get to know yourself better. We are so busy paying compliments to others, so busy judging others and trying to get this and that, we fail to understand why we even came on this planet.
Next time you can’t sleep, ask yourself what is going on and listen to what your body tells you. If you still have any questions, shoot me an email and I will see what I can do to help you.
Check out other blogs I have written and do know that you are the Designer and the Director of your own life so design and direct it the way you wish to live it.
Dr. Shakib