A good night’s sleep is one of the most refreshing things we can experience, but many people find that it is all too elusive. Insomnia is defined as difficulty getting to sleep, or staying asleep long enough to feel refreshed, in the absence of external factors (such as children!) waking you up. Insomnia can be acute (lasting a short time) but often becomes chronic, affecting people several nights a week over long periods of time. Insomnia is a common problem, affecting more women than men.
There are many different causes for poor sleep, but often it’s the way we approach sleep that is the problem. Your brain does not just switch on and off: you need time to wind down and transition into sleep. Activities and distractions that keep your brain awake can make this more difficult. Your brain also has a natural ‘sleep-wake’ cycle that tells it roughly when to sleep. If your lifestyle or work disrupts this, it means you are trying to sleep when your brain thinks you need to be awake – and this can cause problems. Once people find themselves unable to fall asleep, anxiety and frustration can rapidly make things worse. We cannot make ourselves fall asleep, but we can quickly make ourselves unable to fall asleep! Treatments, therefore, often target our thought patterns and emotional response to insomnia as much as the initial triggers.
The most effective treatments for insomnia look at developing good sleeping habits. Establishing a regular waking time, no matter what time you went to sleep, or whether it is a weekday or the weekend, helps to regulate the sleep-wake cycle. So does a regular winding-down routine before bed. Improving sleep hygiene is also often helpful. This is nothing to do with how clean you are, but working on promoting good sleep by ensuring the bedroom is calm, quiet, not too light etc, and removing distractions and obstacles to sleep, such as mobile phones or TVs. Aside from such practical suggestions, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) has been demonstrated to be extremely effective in reducing insomnia, with one study finding nearly 3/4 sufferers saw an improvement after just one session.
Chemical means of getting off to sleep, like sleeping tablets, mean that we do not sleep properly, so we don’t wake up feeling refreshed. Some sleeping tablets also have a ‘hangover’ effect in the morning. Some people use them for shifts or jet lag, but it is not a good habit to get into regularly: sleeping tablets are only prescribed in most cases for a maximum of two weeks. They are not a long-term solution – ultimately we need to learn how to get a natural night’s sleep.
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